Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Pursue Peace

I was talking to someone on the phone earlier this evening. She'd asked me to do something for her, which I had done. Then she started finding fault with it. She wanted this thing changed, then that thing changed, then the other thing. From the very beginning of our association I had felt she was only asking me to do this thing so that she could find a way to control me. Finally I said, "Do it yourself," and hung up on her.

It probably wasn't the best way to handle that situation. Later, as I pondered what to do next, I realized that I had expected too much from the interaction, and that I had not listened to my instincts from the get-go. My instincts initially were to allow this person to do whatever it was she wanted to do without me getting involved.

The issue of getting along with other people has been one that I've had many misconceptions about. I used to think that if I didn't get along with someone, anyone, then I wasn't a "good Christian." As I've grown as a person, and can see my own weaknesses, I've come to realize that people do things for all kinds of reasons. I've learned to recognize when I was controlling others (or trying to), and that made me more aware of how others sometimes manipulate people without even knowing it, and are not even aware of their compulsion to control others. Or if they are aware, they use their tendency to do that as an excuse to keep from trying to change. "I can't help it; I'm just that way."

This realization has led to some rather painful but liberating results. When I realized that I was in a poisoned relationship with a person I thought was a friend for many years, I knew I had to end it. This person excused her efforts to control me by saying, "That's what friends do - they don't have to watch what they say around each other." It tore at me every time she would criticize me, make me feel so small and insignificant, as if I didn't measure up to her standard, and then one day she said something to me that made me understand that these things were boundaries that should never be crossed - and they were always there, but I never acknowledged it. That's when I ended it. The relationship had been robbing me of something I had come to cherish as I healed from my past: my peace.

As for today's conversation, I had to come to the place where I just let go of my need to be right, and let her go ahead and do whatever she wanted - because she was going to do it her way whether I liked it or not, and my peace was too important to me to sacrifice it for anything.

What am I going to do now about it? I'm not sure yet. I do know that if she tries to force the issue, she may end up not getting what she wants at all... at least not from me. I've also learned that if I rush too quickly to "make it right," I might end up back in the same situation I just extricated myself from, feeling subjugated and patronized. That's not peace.

Paul said, "If it be possible, as much as lies within you, live at peace with all people." Okay, have I done everything possible? I'm starting to realize that perhaps the reason why relations have always been strained between the two of us is not because someone else's decisions kept us from connecting, but because I was tired of being treated like I didn't matter. Every time I tried to re-connect, my personhood got trampled. My peace suffered. It still does.

I still don't know what I'm going to do. But I know Someone who can show me.

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