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Just wanted to honor a friend tonight.
Recently I offended a friend. My openness and forthrightness and opinion sharing can sometimes cross invisible boundaries without knowing it. Such is never my intention… the only boundaries I want to cross are comfort-zone borders which keep people from thinking or growing, or even keep us in negative patterns of behavior.
But I never want to use my words to intentionally harm people.
That said, with my best intentions at heart, I still hurt a friend.
Now, what happens when you hurt someone? If it’s in the heat of the moment, often you will get hurt back! A quick verbal reaction to your perceived verbal attack is a good first maneuver in hand-to-hand verbal combat.
Or, sometimes the recipient of the initial verbal lashing will be so hurt that nothing comes out… or perhaps the moment was so fast there was not time to react. However it happens, the feelings of hurt are allowed to fester, and to grow, and to morph into feelings of anger, bitterness, contempt… eventually hatred.
All over what might have just been a misunderstanding.
I think the words that hurt my friend may have been more than a misunderstanding. We see something that my friend holds very dear from very different angles… and there’s nothing wrong with that, until in my not so subtle ways, I speak so strongly FOR my opinion that it inherently attacks my friend’s deeply held opinion.
Even with that, my friend was able to do the unexpected.
The very next time we were together, there was no lingering awkwardness… no bitterness… no pretending nothing was wrong… just a frank, open, real confrontation of the issue. A crushing blow was not met by a return crushing blow, but a two-way, let’s understand what happened conversation.
I think that’s how it’s supposed to be, and yet, after it happened, I realized that it was unexpected. Not what would normally happen.
So many of us are relationally unhealthy, that we would bottle it up, or fight fire with fire, and BLAST our loose-tongued friend for the hurt they have inflicted upon us.
But open, honest relationships need to always be that. Open and honest. Only in that can there be true friendship and freedom.
Very cool.
So, do the unexpected. Live a little like Jesus. Go out on a limb. You will amaze the target of your kindness and perhaps God will do something unexpected in you.