No One Wins

I shifted uneasily, as words continued to fly.  As an observer of two people demanding their way.  What both of them want are good things.  But with no love, no one gives an inch except to save themselves the strain of the current argument.

A phone call breaks up the exchange and one person leaves the room.  I can feel the strain.  My own head trying to understand why I have both empathy and anger for both parties.  One deserves the promise filled, but also needs to give respect.  The other deserves a measure of empathy for the weight they carry, but also needs to give what was promised without manipulation.

At the end of the day, I retreat to my own abode and ask, "WHY?"

Seeing both sides, means despite the pull, I don't get to pick sides.  And...

No one wins, when you compete in relationships.

Because you're not just pushing a body around in a sporting competition, you're pushing and manipulating a human heart and human spirit.  One that is likely already broken, injured.  Physical wounds heal way faster, then the slashes of words or emotions ever will.

And the wounds don't just come from the person you're competing with; If I am going to compete for power in a relationship, I am most likely to harden a part of my heart to do it.  I close off part of myself that is actually meant to offer life.

To hold oneself open to wounds and say, "I will honor your need above mine."  doesn't mean you become a doormat, your needs invisible.  You can still ask, but put away the weapons.  Words creatively formed to knock the other person down, become questions that ask the questions that unlock the defensiveness of oneself and the other.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

For God sought to restore the relationship with man, that man had torn.  He gave all of Himself, He gave His Son, so that their is reconciliation and restoration.