Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Keeping A Record Of Wrongs

While studying 1 Corinthians 13 love something struck me. I realized that I didn't understand how all encompassing the phrase that says "keeps no record of wrongs" is. I tend to think of it as actually keeping a mental note of what exactly was done wrong and then bringing it up in a later disagreement. I think it is that but I also think it is withholding love or acts of kindness and love because of how my feelings have been hurt by something done to me wrong or something done wrong in general. For me, this strikes home in a huge, huge way. I first noticed it with my kids. I find that sometimes (even when they are not doing anything wrong) I am a bit snappy and my tone of voice is not very loving. They are doing everything I ask them to do but I am still being a bit brash and bossy instead of gentle and loving. God is so gracious to bring this to my attention and make me ask myself why I am being short with them. When I start to pray about it and dig down to the root of the issue, God has shown me over and over that it is unresolved conflict. It is something that happened earlier that day or even the day before that has left me with a bad attitude toward them. This is a prime example of keeping a record of wrongs. Instead, I need to fully resolve the conflict and choose to forgive them for it in the moment so it does not keep feeding negativity into our lives. This may sound a bit simple but I didn't even realize I was doing this until God revealed it to me. Something would happen we would deal with it and move on. I really thought I was over it simply because I wasn't consciously thinking of the wrong. But, deep down it was still there unresolved and continued to play out negatively in our daily interactions. Immediately after I started noticing it with my kids I started noticing it with my husband. Sparing the gory details, we get in little spats don't really resolve them and try to move on. This leads to me being disrespectful and unkind to him. Lesson? I need a serious lesson on conflict resolution. Recommendations?

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