Truth in Love

"Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ..." - Ephesians 4:15

If there is one lesson that God has been trying to teach me over the last season it is this one: to speak the truth in love. Many of you don't know me well enough to know how much I struggle with my interactions with other people. I am normally one of those sweep everything under the rug kind of people. You could say something that I have some MAJOR opinions about and still walk away from the conversation with no idea that I even disagreed with you, because I wouldn't say anything. Now, many of you are thinking, "Girly not voicing her opinions, I don't believe that for a second!" But its true. When we are talking about abstract things and theology and stuff like that I have no problem telling someone I disagree with them and exactly why, but when we are talking about real people and real situations I really struggle with speaking up and saying something even when the situation directly affects me.

But I have learned something here recently. That is that God knew exactly what he was doing when he put those two words together: Truth and Love. I have found that my instincts are to do one or the other but not both together. I often go with the all love approach and stay silent. I don't intervene with correction, "why go there? This is such a minor thing! No point in unnecessary drama over this!" I think to myself. But I have learned, recently, that when I do that, not only am I hurting the other person by not sharing with them my true feelings, but I am hurting myself. I have realized that the source of so much of my frustration is walking away from these situations with my own unresolved frustration. I am now all fired up, "Can you believe she did that?" or "Why in the world would he think that was a good idea!?" When I choose to not deal with people in truth, I tend to walk away with major frustration.

On the other hand, after many interactions like above, I get myself so frustrated by a particular issue that when I do deal with it I go with the all truth no love method and completely blow up. That does nobody any good as well. The other person is frustrated and angry, of course they are, they didn't even know that every time they talked about ________ that they were feeding the frustrated animal inside me. And I am upset and emotional.

But all of this could have been avoided. If I had spoken up about the little things that are tough to say when I had the opportunity and approached them with words of truth in love, I could have A) been a good friend (wife, daughter, coworker,etc) with a real, not fake relationship, B) walked away from the interaction with peace rather than frustration, and C) avoided a build-up of frustration that causes a blow up later.

For those of you that don't work in abstract, I will give you an example of this: A couple of weeks ago I was in the car with my mom riding home from a tennis match. My mom was venting about some frustration with my dad (her husband) that he seemingly ignored her serious feelings about a sensitive issue. She was very upset with him and just couldn't understand why he didn't act on her recommendations about the situation. I had a choice to make: I could smile and nod and escape the tough conversation, or I could speak up and tell her what I really thought about the situation in LOVE! I gently spoke words to help my mom realize that sometimes she overreacts to situations, and though she wasn't overreacting this time, it would be difficult for Dad to know that. You have no idea how hard it was for me to even lightly touch on the subject of someone else's flaws, especially my moms. But to my surprise, she took it so well: she immediately stated that she could understand that and it helped her to have some clarity on the situation. And when I got in my car to drive home I could just feel the weight of frustration lift off my shoulders. This conversation, that my mom probably doesn't even remember, was a huge personal win for me. I walked away with peace rather than being frustrated and rolling around in my head my true feelings about the situation.

Now Ladies, I am not promising that every time you attempt to speak the truth in love it will go perfectly for you, but I will promise that if you are carrying around a burden of frustration over your relationships with other people that there is a way to release that burden. I also want to say that the truth I am referring to here is your true feelings, not that every word and opinion we have in this life is THE TRUTH. I think that its important to realize that sometimes we are wrong, and that's sometimes even better because when we speak up in love we get to find out that there was no reason to be frustrated in the first place. In these times I am even more thankful that I spoke in LOVE because then I don't have to be embarrassed, I can just be thankful that I didn't carry around nonexistent frustration.

Ladies, I urge you to do some serious examining of your words. Its not fun to make these speech patterns become your 'default setting,' but it is so worth it when you get the peace on the other side!

~Laura