Below is a share of a post originally published on January 5, 2022.
“A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”
Proverbs 29:25
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 arm’s reach of him again filled with fear that he really would sew it onto my face.
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.
The thing about responding immediately in times of disagreement is that there seems to be a direct correlation between the swiftness of our reply and the chances that we are sinful in our response. I know for myself, 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.
John Piper writes of relationships, “…you have to avoid sinful responses to the sins of others.” 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.
So, what does it look like if we choose to not respond? To let go of the last word? In the moment of discord, we 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.
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.
This hit home to me exactly when I needed it. I’m going through conflict with my significant other as we type and I’ve been trying not to engage to his anger and lies. It’s been so difficult to me, to want to defend myself. But it doesn’t help. This was a great message. <3