We are born with reflexes. Physical reflexes exist to keep us safe (and freak us out as a little kid at the pediatrician’s office). But, our relationship reflexes are things we train ourselves to do over time based on past hurt. We aim to protect ourselves, but when we are self-protection focused in relationships, things don’t usually go well in the long run. This is the first in a series of posts where I examine how we may need to reprogram our default, or reflexive, positions in relationships.
I’m a talker. Always have been. No lie, I had a great-uncle who, when I was four years old, gave me a zipper in a Christmas card….for. my. mouth. I never got within arms reach of him again filled with fear that he really would sew it onto my face.
I have given birth to talkers. My oldest, God bless him, uses all the words. All of them. Every day. My little one is a tad quieter, on the surface, but man oh man. You get that one started and she will talk her brother under the table. We seem to be people with the genetic trait of “why use one word when you can use three…or 47?” To say it is rarely quiet in our house is an understatement.
Because of this tendency to verbally process everything happening to me, for the vast majority of my life, my instinct in difficult relationships or in conflict was to talk. Talk it out with the other person. Tell them what I meant or was thinking or feeling. Have them hear my side of the story. Or, tell them all the many ways they were wrong. In almost every instance of discord in my life, my instinctive response was to talk. Immediately and a lot.
But after encountering deep discord in relationships in recent years, I have felt the Lord tenderly, sweetly whispering to me, “Jennifer, shut up.” Not in a permanently shut it down sort of way, but more of a prodding to not respond immediately to conflict. This degree of disengagement has felt foreign, has not been an instant transformation for me, and has not become how I universally engage. But, it has become more characteristic of how I manage difficult situations with the people I encounter.
You see, the thing about responding immediately in times of disagreement is that there seems to be a direct correlation between the swiftness of my reply and the chances that I am sinful in my response. When I am quick to answer in conflict, there is a really good chance I am doing so in anger. If I am fast to defend – myself or others I care about – more than likely, I’m taking my eyes off of the Lord and instead am focusing on self-preservation or protecting others I may not be called to defend.
Responding with at least temporary silence is especially hard, though, when the other party is behaving badly. When we are being unfairly critiqued, attacked, or misrepresented, our human response is to want to defend ourselves. We crave restoring what was broken by the unjust insults hurled in our direction by others. And as hard as it is to stay silent in those situations, when the other person is making sinful choices, it is absolutely vital that we not get into that fray in that moment. Otherwise, we run the risk of getting sucked in.
John Piper writes of relationships, “…you have to avoid sinful responses to the sins of others.” That one stopped me in my tracks. In any relationship – friend, spouse, former spouse, coworker – things will go off the rails at some point. And the only hope we have of ever restoring the relationship to one that honors God is by staying out of the sin cycle that Piper cautions us about.
In my experience, the best way for me to avoid a sinful response is to choose to not respond – at least for the time being. It doesn’t mean I won’t ever respond. It just means I’m choosing to not do it in the moment. In the moment when I may be feeling hurt or blindsided or embarrassed or angry. Choosing to deal with the emotion first and then figuring out the God-honoring response is a degree of self-discipline we are called to in Proverbs.
“A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”
Proverbs 29:25
And I don’t know about you, but “fool” is not how I want anyone describing me. So, here’s to all of we recovering talkers learning the value of, at least temporarily, being quiet.
