Conflicts
Conflicts (1)
One of the traditional ways in which the couples deal with conflicts was to suppress them. They tried to forget the conflict as if it were sweeping under the carpet and ignored it. We thought and called this method a ‘good’ and that’s how Christians supposed to do. But burying the conflicts in our hearts makes us more resentful, depleting our energy and blurring our daily life perspective. Burying the conflicts from each other’s differences will be resurrected again because we are burying them alive. The conflicts are very common in our human relationships and we consider them very negative. That's why we often lose the opportunity to receive the blessing of conflict. And the result is resentment in our hearts and complaints in our lips.
I remember making such determination before I got married: ‘I will never complain about past things when I get married.’ The reason was because I had heard my mother complaining within the context of marital conflicts when I was growing up (I apologize to my beloved mother for sharing this). So, I used to say many times as half joke and half serious that when there is marital conflicts the past histories come our fluently. Since I really hated it to hear them when I was growing up, I firmly decided in my heart that when I would get marry I would never to that. Until that time, I had quite full of negative thoughts about ‘conflict'. But now it is different. I now see more positive things than negative things about conflict. I think now that conflict is a good opportunity. It is the good opportunity for the couples to get to know each other. I think the conflict is the good opportunity for the couples to get to know each other and also to learn how to love each other.
Let me give an example. When we used to live in Korea, my wife and I had a bit of conflict due to our first child. Through that conflict l I became more aware of my wife and myself. That means I got to know little bit that our different backgrounds affected each of us and that was why we had that conflict. The reason we had the conflict was because I wanted my son to yield to others but not my wife. In other words, we argued because I wanted my son to be a person who yields to others but my wife wanted him to do things that he wanted to do. Through that conflict, I realized that my wife, as the first daughter, grew up yielding to her parents, what they wanted her to do, instead of doing what she wanted to do. So my wife didn’t want our first son to grow like that, not able to do what he wanted to do but yield to parents and others. She wanted him to do what he wanted to do. But I wanted to nurture my son to be able to yield to others because that was how I got influenced by my father who is a pastor. In the end, we had this conflict of opinion because of the influence we got from our father and/or mother when we were growing up. This opportunity not only made me more aware of my wife, but also made me to understand her more and love her as she is.
The first thing I want to share about conflict is that we make conflict an opportunity to get to know each other and love each other as we are. Let’s not see the conflict only negatively because we get hurts and is painful. Conflict is an opportunity! That is why we shouldn’t plant greater resentment in our hearts by constantly dealing the conflicts in the traditional way. If we keep on pretending that there isn’t any conflict between each other even though there is, then not only our energy will be depleted but also we are putting our hearts into jail little by little. Obviously there is a conflict, but pretending not to do is to deplete our energy as well as to put our hearts into jail. In order for us to enjoy freedom in the Lord, we must learn the lessons and wisdom that God wants to give to us through conflicts, not sweeping them under the carpet and ignored them. In doing so, we will be able to pursue the beautiful loving relationship that God desires in all our marital relationships.