In any long-term relationship, there are many occasions for disagreement, conflict, and hurt — things that can damage or end relationships. This is true of those following Jesus and those who have not yet started following Jesus. One might think that inside the family of people following Jesus there wouldn’t be conflict, since all of us stand on the common ground of having been forgiven by God, and were told to forgive others as we have been forgiven. But people who follow Jesus have feelings just the same as those who don’t, and those feelings get hurt some times.
There are those in the faith who advocate suppressing your hurt feelings as a strategy for being more like Jesus. Good luck with that! Suppressed hurt feelings tend to bubble over in unexpected and undesirable ways, generally causing havoc for those who get bubbled upon, as well as for the bubblers. I do agree if the offense is small and it caused no real damage to the relationship, it is often wiser to overlook it. This is called “forbearance”. However, for those offenses that we have difficulty shaking, we can’t simply forbear, we have to do something about.
I’m pretty sure Jesus would not recommend stuffing our feelings. His comments in Matthew 18 suggest that He wants us to talk to the person who hurt us, for the purpose of restoring the relationship. I have heard some really bad teachings on Matthew 18, which spent a whole lot more time on punishing the other person. But if you read Matthew 18 as anything but a desire by Jesus to restore relationships, then you are reading it incorrectly.
I just recently went through resolving some hurt I experienced with my friend Joe (not his real name). It ended well, and while I could have written about the process without having a real life experience, our resolving the conflict went so well that I thought it would be helpful to write about it, while protecting privacy and some of the details.
Just to let you know, this was not a manufactured offense — I really felt it, and struggled for a whole hour in prayer, and then again in church on Sunday morning. It was something that was affecting my life, because it kept coming to me in my thoughts. Basically, Joe did something that appeared to me to be disloyal and like he didn’t value the relationship he had with me and a few others. This brought into question whether I could trust him. Since we had been friends for several years, I felt like the relationship was important enough to risk further hurt or rejection if my talking with him went badly.
I think it was important for me to keep in mind that the purpose for talking with him was restoration of relationship. Some people seem to confront with the purpose of being proved right or to administer some kind of punishment. If that is your purpose, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the relationship will be broken and it will end badly.
The first part of the restoration seemed to me to be to verify the essential facts and to understand his thoughts and motivations. In order to do this, I needed to communicate to Joe what I observed and how I felt about it. My late friend and mentor Franklyn Miller taught me that one should never confront someone in writing. It is too easy to read the wrong things into the words or between the lines. And the written message is permanent and can be replayed again and again. Better to do it in person so that the person can hear you voice and see your face, and where you can do the same. The phone isn’t quite as good, but could be a potential substitute if getting together is too challenging logistically.
When I thought about how to begin with my friend Joe, I knew that he had no idea that I had been hurt in any way, so I decided that I would send a relatively short message by email, outlining the issue, and then follow up with a phone call, after he had a chance to at least digest what I said. I know that if I get totally blind-sided, I don’t always think clearly or react well.
I think it is not helpful in one’s introduction of the topic to overstate the injury or to be accusatory. In fact, it is best to downplay the degree of injury, though not denying that there was hurt or anger. In my email to Joe I basically wrote “This is what I saw / heard… I was hurt a little bit… I was hoping you could help me understand what you were thinking / doing… I value our relationship, and would like the bit of injury that it experienced to be restored.” I tried not to accuse Joe of wrong-doing, only stating how things appeared, not assigning ill-motives to him. In fact, it is important for your thinking and for your sharing that you recognize the good in the other person, and be somewhat perplexed at what seems to be a deviation from the norm. It is important to avoid getting your friend to be on the defensive, because once someone becomes defensive, it is difficult to work through any of the issues.
In describing what you saw or heard, try to be as dispassionate as possible. If you saw your friend go into the store, take something off the shelf, and leave without paying, you might assume that he was shoplifter and a thief. Saying “I saw you steal” or “I saw you shoplift” involves some interpretation on your part. Perhaps they had already paid ahead of time, or had the owner’s permission, or had planned to come back inside to pay. It would be better, in such a case, to say “I saw you walk out of the store with the item without paying.” Your friend can offer an explanation, which indeed may be that you saw them shoplifting. But you also may find out more about what motivated them to do it if you don’t start with an accusation that implies they are evil. Doing things in a way that emphasize caring about the person, wanting to restore the relationship, wanting to think the best of them, and wanting to help are attitudes and approaches that are most helpful and will more likely lead to success.
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Well, my friend Joe was a champ, and replied by email before I could give him a call. Instead of reacting defensively, he seemed glad that I would talk with him about this. Perhaps he thinks like I do that there is much wisdom in the Proverb that talks about the wounds of a friend being precious. That is, it is hard for people to tell you the difficult truth, and if you have a friend who really loves you and does that, then you are really blessed. I know that I so much value when dear friends do that to me. After listening, I might still think they weren’t quite on the mark, but I am always grateful for such friends who risk telling me the truth. Generally, they are almost always right, and I try to listen and learn and change.
He then explained the reason he did what he did, and I came to see that under similar circumstances, I might have chosen to do the same, and I told him that. As I wrote earlier, generally I would not have done this by email, but his response was such that it seemed we were of one mind in trying to be reconciled. In fact, my friend affirmed our relationship and agreed that he wanted to get it back to normal. He invited any additional questions that I might have for him.
I did suggest a few ways he might do things differently if the situation were to arise again. But I affirmed him in that I understood why he chose the way he did, and told him that I might have chosen the same, and even recognized times in my past when I had also made certain assumptions about how things would be perceived by others, and had miscalculated badly.
He wrote back another positive email in which he again affirmed our relationship.
I like to think that when a relationship hits a bit of a crisis point and the crisis is resolved well, that relationship will be stronger than it was before. While it is still too early to tell, I do believe that Joe and I will have a closer friendship as a result of our exchange. It could have been otherwise. Had I started with the accusation that he was a disloyal friend who was looking out only for his own fun, I’m pretty sure that our relationship would have suffered. If he had replied with a defensive message like, “It’s none of your business” or “I don’t care what you think” or “You’re just hypersensitive”, then the relationship would have suffered. But we didn’t.
Another positive thing that came of this is that I think I received a bit of inner healing from past hurts. As I was praying and thinking through my reaction my friend’s actions, I recognized that perhaps my reaction was slightly out of proportion to what was called for — that is, others in my situation may have reacted less. An out-of-proportion reaction is an indicator that there might be some type of unhealed event from my past that is being triggered by the current circumstance.
I spent some time searching for the root feeling. I sensed that it might be something like “abandonment”. As I did some more seeking about what abandonment issues I might have had in my past, I realized that I perhaps still had some unhealed issues related to being adopted. I had a major healing 7 or more years ago concerning my adoption, but that mostly had to do with why God let me be given up for adoption, and where He was in the process. Back then, I receive this beautiful image of Him holding me in His arms when I was a baby, walking me. This time I felt like I had to deal with rejection by my birth parents. I forgave them for that, and felt some release. It was after this release that I wrote my friend. It is possible that had I written him before that time, I may have found it harder to take a very gentle and conciliatory tone.
My hope is that people reading this will have found some very helpful pointers in resolving hurt in relationships, and perhaps even something helpful in regard to getting healed from past hurts. It’s never too late to learn new ways of dealing with old problems!
First posted on June 28, 2010