3 Things I’m Learning About Getting Along With People

For the next week or so, I’ll be posting some of my favorite posts from the archives. I’m speaking at a ladies retreat the first weekend of March, and want to focus on preparing for the sessions I’ll be teaching.

I’ve re-posted readers’ favorites before, but those are not necessarily my personal favorites – the ones that came from the deepest part of me, and seemed to bring some kind of healing and truth to my life as I wrote them. I hope you enjoy them, the second time around!

********************************************

source

Anytime you live with people, issues will come up that must be dealt with.

Or not.

I suppose you could just avoid people, ignore the issues, and keep going, but that doesn’t usually seem to work out so well long term. It can seem like the more appealing option sometimes, because dealing with issues is HARD. It takes a lot of courage, and a willingness to go through some pain and discomfort. And yet every time I’ve had enough courage to take the plunge, it has been completely worth it.

Sometimes, “dealing with it” has meant working things out with other people.

Other times, “dealing with it” means working things out…in me. (That’s far more uncomfortable!)

Here are three things I’m trying to think about when I am frustrated with somebody:

1) Ask the question, “Why would a completely sane, reasonable person do something like this?”

Ben took a conflict management class for his Masters program this last year, and this was one of the questions he was taught to ask.

When someone makes a choice to do something which seems completely unreasonable, annoying, or foolish to me, asking this question produces the same answer every time: They do it because they don’t know.

They don’t know how I feel, they don’t know all the facts, they don’t realize that it’s difficult for other people.

And that’s okay! Since when does everybody know everything?

Since never.

And when I realize this, I start to think about the situation from the other person’s point of view. I start to see how things might look from their perspective, which is always going to be different from my perspective.

“Not knowing” is so much easier to take than “being a jerk”.

2) Assume that everyone is trying their very best.

Why is it so easy to assume that people are being lazy or careless or rude, and if they would just try a little harder, everything would be fine?

Who says they are not trying their very best?

Maybe they have some heavy burden to carry that you don’t know about, maybe they’re going through a really tough time, and for whatever reason, this is their best.

When you think about it that way, so much annoyance disappears, and it’s possible to give somebody the benefit of the doubt.

3) That person is God’s favorite.

Jon Acuff wrote an incredible post about how every single person is God’s favorite. And when someone is annoying me, and I think, “__(fill in the blank)__ is God’s favorite.” It is very difficult to stay mad and think evil thoughts if you truly think about that one for a second.

The same God who loves me loves them.

He made me, He made them.

I pray for God to get me through a tough time, and they pray to the same God.

Who am I to think that I’m better, that I know better, that my choices are better, that I deserve to be more blessed by God?

******************************************************

If problems with people are cut off during the thought process, they stay a lot smaller.

And now you know exactly what I’m trying to think when I’m in a difficult situation. I repeat those three thoughts to myself over and over.

Sometimes.

I still have a lot of work to do on this one!

What’s your secret for getting along with difficult people?

While We’re Still on the Topic of Worry…

I just read a blog post that I loved so much, I needed to pass it on immediately to all of you. It pretty much sums up why I’ve spent the majority of my life worrying about stuff:

“I’d rather think the worst thing is going to happen and then be pleasantly surprised when it didn’t.” (Jon Acuff)

Ha! We think alike, Jon Acuff and I.

And he found the best way to overcome those thoughts. Head over here to find out what it is…

3 Things I’m Learning About Getting Along With People

Anytime you live with people, issues will come up that must be dealt with.

Or not. You could just avoid people, ignore the issues, and keep going, but that doesn’t usually seem to work out so well long term. It can seem like the more appealing option sometimes, because dealing with issues is HARD. It takes a lot of courage, and a willingness to go through some pain and discomfort. And yet every time I’ve had enough courage to take the plunge, it has been completely worth it.

Sometimes, “dealing with it” has meant working things out with other people.

Lately, though, it’s meant a make-over for the way that I think about things.

Here are the three things I am trying to think about when I am frustrated with somebody:

1) Ask the question, “Why would a completely sane, reasonable person do something like this?”

Ben took a conflict management class for his Masters program this last year, and this was one of the questions he was taught to ask. And you know what? It makes all the difference in the world.

When someone makes a choice to do something which seems completely unreasonable, annoying, or foolish to me, asking this question produces the same answer every time: They do it because they don’t know. They don’t know how I feel, they don’t know all the facts, they don’t realize that it’s difficult for other people.

And that’s okay! Since when does everybody know everything? Since never. And when I realize this, I start to think about the situation from the other person’s point of view. I start to see how things might look from their perspective, which is always going to be different from my perspective.

“Not knowing” is so much easier to take than “being a jerk”.

2) Assume that everyone is trying their very best.

Why is it so easy to assume that people are being lazy or careless or rude, and if they would just try a little harder, everything would be fine?

Who says they are not trying their very best? Maybe they have some heavy burden to carry that you don’t know about, maybe they’re going through a really tough time, and for whatever reason, this is their best.

When you think about it that way, so much annoyance disappears, and it’s possible to give somebody the benefit of the doubt.

3) That person is God’s favorite.

Jon Acuff wrote an incredible post about how every single person is God’s favorite. And when someone is annoying me, and I think, “_________ is God’s favorite”, it is very hard to stay mad and think evil thoughts.

The same God who loves me loves them. He made me, He made them. I pray for God to get me through a tough time, and they pray to the same God. Who am I to think that I’m better, that I know better, that my choices are better, that I deserve to be more blessed by God?

******************************************************

If problems are cut off during the thought process, they stay a lot smaller.

And now you know exactly what I’m trying to think when I’m in a difficult situation. I repeat those three thoughts to myself over and over. Sometimes. When I have PMS, I generally seem to ditch the effort and just let ‘er rip, but I’m working on that, too!

What’s your secret for getting along with difficult people?

One More Post About Witnessing…

So a little while ago, I wrote this post about witnessing. And then last week, I was reading one of my usual favorite blogs, Stuff Christians Like, and what should I find, but this post on….witnessing!

It reminded me so much of what I had been thinking about and trying to communicate, that I figured I would share the link with you all, in case you wanted to do some more reading on the topic.

It’s a good one! Really. I don’t share links on my blog unless I really, really like the stuff.

What a Plant Taught Me About My Relationship With Jesus

When I was in collage, I had a big, beautiful plant named Dave.

He was a dieffenbachia plant, so my roommate and I wanted to give him a name that started with a “D” – Dave, the Dieffenbachia.

He grew to be large and very leafy, and we loved having that fresh burst of green in our room. We heard somewhere that coffee grinds could fertilize plants, and fortunately for Dave, my roommate LOVED coffee. Dave got a lot of coffee grinds that year….

Anyway, Dave did so well in dorm that I brought him back the next year, too. He grew to be as tall as me, big, beautiful and green.

One day, I was sitting in my room doing homework, when I heard a strange rustling sound. I turned around just in time to see Dave fall to the floor and die. It was kind of shocking.

I hurried over to his pot, and pulled a little at his thick stem, trying to figure out what had happened. To my surprise, it came right out of the dirt, just like that.

Dave had no roots.

From the outside, everything looked perfectly fine. There was no indication that anything was wrong, but underneath the dirt, his roots were not growing. But Dave needed deep roots under the surface to support what was growing above the surface.

photo © 2010 Ian nasikoman | more info (via: Wylio)

And I’ve been thinking about how easy it is for my relationship with Jesus to slip into “Dave-mode” – what you see on the outside is really all that there is. Roots start to suffer pretty quickly if they are not getting what they need to grow.

Oswald Chambers writes, “My worth to God in public is what I am in private.” (My Utmost For His Highest, March 17 devotional)

Another quote I love is what Jon Acuff’s dad said to him:

“My primary prayer is for your private, interior life to keep growing so that it can support your growing public life.”

Sometimes it scares me how easy it is to fake the public part while completely neglecting the private part. Not that our fake attempts come anything close to a spirit-filled life, but it’s funny how often we try.

But I feel depleted very quickly when I’m giving to a lot of people without getting filled up myself. My giving to others should spill out from the overflow of a heart filled with Jesus – I want so much of Him in me that I can’t run dry. I want Him to pour through me to others.

Healthy roots are required for all of those desires! Deep, private roots.

Moral of the story: Don’t be like Dave!

Dig down deep into Jesus, so that nothing in this world will be able to knock you over.

Why Our Kids Won’t Ever Be Cool

Found this great post by Jon Acuff about raising kids who are “dorks”. I wouldn’t go so far as to call my sweet girls dorks, but I do think that they could have trouble being considered “cool”. If we keep homeschooling them, they’ll never know! At least, not until they’re old enough to work through that emotionally. Hopefully…

Anyway. This is something Ben and I have talked about before. I think many parents secretly want their children to be brilliant, gifted, and socially accepted. Well, actually, “cool” would be better than “socially accepted”. I don’t want my kids to be mocked and made fun of. I don’t want them to feel rejected or lonely. I would much rather have them be strong leaders among their peers, confident, outgoing, sought after by people.

But the trouble is that I don’t want to raise our girls in a way that will lend itself very well to turning them into young women that the world will find very desirable. (And really, writing “that the world will find desirable” does sound quite disturbing, if you think about it.)

They won’t be allowed to listen to raunchy music, or dress immodestly, or watch what everybody else is watching on TV. They will have rules and curfews and all such uncool parental types of things.  Sheltered? Yes, please. In some ways. If “sheltered” means keeping them kids for the number of years that they actually ARE kids, then they will indeed be sheltered.

It would be very legalistic of me to believe that a bunch of strict rules will turn our girls into godly people. But I am a big fan of pure thoughts and pure hearts, and as a parent, I want to do what I can to keep the soil of their lives soft – I don’t want them to become desensitized to all of the junk that’s around them. Sometimes, I think being sheltered can be a good thing.

But I don’t want them to be ignorant or naive of real life. I want them to care about what is going on in the world around them – to know that good and evil exists without needing to make it into entertainment, or to constantly live on the edge of it. And then to make life choices that are godly, instead of cool.

I guess sometimes, in the right place and in the right crowd, “cool” can be “godly”. But I don’t want to raise children who are too concerned with what is cool.

Because that wouldn’t be cool. Ha!

But seriously. Are there any other parents out there who feel even a tiny bit of the inner struggle between raising cool kids or raising godly kids?

The Bible pretty much promises that it will be hard to follow Jesus. It will hurt, and be lots of work, and be a struggle. Lots of people won’t understand, and will mock and scorn that kind of a life. That doesn’t sound appealing. And yet I know that everything good and wonderful and close to Jesus is most definitely worth all the pain, work, and struggle. That’s what I want for my darling girls. I hope and pray that they grow up wanting it too.

Even if they are dorks. I’m kind of a dork myself! It’s working out okay.

Perfectionism and Pursuing Dreams

I loved this post from Jon Acuff’s new blog about perfectionism keeping people from pursuing their dreams. It’s gotten all kinds of thoughts marinating in my mind as I figure out what’s holding me back from some things in my life right now. You should check it out – it’s a good one!