Just... love.

Let's talk about conflict resolution. 

I hate it. If I had to peg one thing on the head of the nail that I am extremely, terribly bad at... it's conflict resolution. 

I'll tell you why: Because it's not fun, it's awkward, it causes one to be vulnerable, humble, emotionally honest, and all that gunky uncomfortable stuff. I mean really... everything that I hate to be.

For real.. I know I spill out all my feelings in my blogs, but in real life, I don't like to be all that emotionally vulnerable around people. If I'm happy, yeah sure, I'll let you see that emotion of mine. But you catch me in a state of needing a good cry or having to share something heavy on my heart that might incite tears or choked out honesty... no thank you. I really would rather not shed those tears in front of people who are gonna wanna come over and put their hand on my back or give me a piece of advice that might comfort me... eww. No. Girl emotions... they're not my favorite. Especially my own. 

I'm definitely a bottle'r-upper, emotion-stuffer, burry-them-to-the-bottom kinda girl. I know it's probably difficult to believe since you see all that emotion-y stuff globbed all over my blog, but compared to most females.. I'm pretty mild, I think. 

But...conflict. It's real and ugly and awful and it's the exact wrong thing to bottle or stuff or burry or hide. And I also like to run away a lot... but that's no good as far as conflict goes either. 

Which adds to me hating conflict, especially, because it really doesn't give me the options or outs that I typically like to take in life. That makes it a jerk.. because it's like, seriously, leave me alone already... 
But..I have to deal with it to make it go away. So I have to work it out, or live with it forever. 

Forever is an awfully long time and "at all" was too long for it to exist in the first place. So, conflict backs me into a corner and I HATE that because it MAKES me do something I don't want to do. And I also hate being put in a box or being told what to do. To a point that I could call it out in my life as a sin issue. Fern doesn't respond well to being told what to do. Like... don't even tell me to go to bed by 10pm the night before I have to wake up at 6:45am because that makes me feel controlled and I refuse to be controlled. Suggest it maybe... maybe...but don't say "do this" because my gut reaction will be to do the opposite. (It's a problem, I know.. we've well established that I'm far from perfect.)

You know what has deaded me lately? Conflict. Because of anger. Anger freakin' started this whole thing and now I'm angry at the fact that anger was the reason. (hang with me.. I know this won't make a ton of sense)

Let me try to explain a little, I do my best to avoid being anger. Because anger is so deadly poisonous and terrible and disgusting for all parties involved, first to the person who has it in their heart, and secondly to the world who has to encounter angry people. It spreads SO fast, guys. Like... you give it a an inch and it takes ten miles. And along with hating to be controlled, I hate hate HATE when people assume I get angry at things that don't typically upset me. And then they're all like, "Are you mad?" and I'm like, "nope, not at all." and then they push it and are like, "Really? I feel like you should be mad? are you mad?" GAH! No! I'm not mad... er.. wasN'T mad. I am NOW because you thought I'd be mad. I wasn't, and now I am. 

I get really angry about people thinking I'm angry. Stupid right? How does that even make sense? It doesn't really. I probably have some deep seeded problem from my childhood or something that I should speak to a counselor about..? I don't know. It's kinda funny.. but not actually. But you can chuckle at it, if you wish.. because it's so.. ironic. Or... amusing...or stupid. 

Wheew! I need to take a deep breath or something.. I'm getting pretty worked up about this. Bottom line, anger is stupid...especially in my own heart. Alrighty... I can surrender to the Lord taking a little control of my heart because if HE doesn't, anger does and I dislike anger more than I dislike the Lord. Well.. I mean, I don't dislike the Lord.. ha.. that'd be silly. 

Back to conflict resolution. Even before conflict resolution with people.. I struggle to resolve it in my heart. I get so torn between my fleshly, human, sinful desire to be mad and justify my anger and NOT deal with things, and then the convictions of the Spirit that tell me to love and forgive and be kind and let things go and over-look an offense. (I'm not a very good Christian, remember.)

Sometimes that personal, heart resolutiony stuff takes me a day or two or three to get all dug through and figured out and concluded. But, once I reach a solid conviction on something, it's really stuck for good. It just takes me a little to process, you know?

But then...the part where I have to act on my convictions... :/  ugh. *facepalm* 
I don't want to. 

Because, well, you have to point out conflict and maybe even cause more tension in order to resolve conflict. Because it's messy. Not only do YOU have to be humble, but there is no telling how the person in question will react to anything you say and if they're going to hate you for it or not. Who wants to be hated for doing the right thing? Let's murder the messenger because it stinks to have our flaws pointed out to us. We can just kill them and stuff them in a closet somewhere and pretend that never happened. 

Okay that's a little morbid.. don't do that. But my point is... I know how *I* want to respond to criticism. And I just assume everyone will respond similarly. Or I *know* they will. You know? 
Like, don't you know someone who is never wrong? No matter how you say it, what you say or even how well you express your point...they respond in a way that makes you feel like the bad guy and it was your fault for being offended? I hate that. It makes me not wanna even start with the whole conflict resolution thing. 

But honestly, it's not talked about enough at church. You wanna know how many believers out their don't get along well? Way tooooo many. And we all just stinkin' sweep everything under the rug and wear our happy-christian-life-is-great masks and put on this great show of conflict-free relationships. 
But I mean, *I* already said how much I hate it and how messy it is.. so I mean... who would want to talk about it at church? Probably no one. 

But, this morning, I had a really good chat with the women's director from my church and I just love how she just says things like I need to hear them. Things like, "Get over it" and "Just deal with it." 
In love, of course, but I mean, I wish had that same loving skill to say "hard truth" like that and it sounding practical and perfect. Honestly, I don't need to hear that my feelings have been heard or that maybe I should think about how I can express myself in a way that won't cause more tension.. that's far too mushy gushy and unhelpful. 

But my conclusion thus far is, conflict NEEDS to be resolved. I've been searching the scriptures this morning and I have found that it is REALLLLY SUPER IMPORTANT that anger not be a part of our lives at all. There are a ton of warnings in the Bible telling us to rid ourselves of anger and bitterness and rage and malice and things like that. Again and again and again. 

It's bad because it gives a mighty foothold to the devil.
It leads to evil.
It's not of God.
It's not loving.
It's not kind.
It's not gentle.
It's selfish.
It doesn't offer forgiveness.
It's enslaving.

It's so many horrible terrible things that are wrong. Don't be angry, guys. I need to hear that more than anyone. Why be angry? It's yucky and unattractive and terrible. 

So how do you resolve conflict? I don't know. But I'm going to find out real quick. Because today might just be the day that I let love cast out fear. In fact, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that today is that day, because I've let way too many suns go down on my anger and on the anger I see in people I love. So... for me, I think it's gonna look like a lot of prayer, a lot of learning what it looks like to love well, a lot of forgiveness and a LOT a lot of God. So much Jesus. And hopefully some peace. Because anger is like strapping cinderblocks on your feet while trying to walk by faith and not sight on a race track full of pot holes and rocks and little things that'd make you trip up even without the cinderblocks. You sure as heck aren't gonna be running with the gospel, or even walking with it...you could try crawling maybe.. but I can tell you from experience that that won't be all that effective either. 

So.... basically.. Love God. Love God with all of your heart because if you give any tiny little bit of your heart over to anger or being annoyed or a little bit irked or irritated... it's gonna be a mess. A big mess. 

 Just... love.