I suppose it shows where God is working in my life. He is, after all, a giver of grace. So, when I disclose this about myself, I hope you can see how to trace God’s faithfulness, even in our imperfections.

I come from a simple people. We never had much money. Many generations of my ancestors farmed land. We don’t know how to put on “airs,” if you know what I mean. What you see is what you get.

Family gatherings were a big part of my social life as a child. Every holiday; in fact, many weekends, we’d end up spending family time with lots of cousins. If you can give that life to your child, I highly recommend it. But here’s the catch; sometimes we just got on each other’s nerves. 

On my mom’s side, I had two younger cousins that I often played with when we all got together. That total cousin count comes to three. And you know what they say about three; it’s a crowd. Too often this proved true and one of us would be left out of the fun. But we knew better than to be rude about it. I don’t remember calling the odd gal out mean names. We didn’t push or shove or pull hair. No, what we did hurt deeper to the core than that - we ignored her.

That is how we handled differences. We stopped speaking to one another. In the case of family gatherings, it wasn’t too big of a deal because we would leave come evening and by the next time we got together, we’d missed each other and would have forgotten all about the last time. And this time around, I might be the one standing on the outskirts of activity, being ignored. Left to watch the adults play Scrabble. 

This method of handling conflict didn’t work too well for me in corporate America. For a couple of reasons. First, you can’t go around ignoring your co-workers. Well, I guess some people try to do so, but at some point, you are probably going to have to collaborate on a project - together. Which usually requires speaking to one another.

Let me give you another angle, a more subtle one. Because I had mastered the art of ignoring (Lord, help me), I was not good at office politics. I always felt uncomfortable talking behind other’s backs and definitely wasn’t going to talk about the conflict face to face. 

Being from a simple background, I was also no good at playing the games. So many people, especially women, can pretend they like you for a time. I have a hard time doing that. Remember, I learned to ignore. So I had no idea how to be nice to someone’s face for even a short time if I wasn’t feeling it. I had to pray, hard, to see what might be causing the conflict between us before I could know how to approach the person. The Holy Spirit would give me discernment to see what differences existed between me and the other person that might be causing the problem. Then, He began teaching me healthy ways to handle various situations.  

Now that you know my tendency, I’ll drop the bomb. Sometimes I need to miss my daughter. Totally ignore her because she isn’t here. I know that’s not acceptable talk. Six years ago, God blessed us with this little personality who is partly my husband, partly me and a whole lot of her. (I can definitely see traces of faith in her young life but we’ll get to that in future posts.) We’ve been snowed in off and on (mostly on) for weeks now. Together. Often just the two of us. I cannot ignore her. I love her with my whole heart, which makes it hard to admit I’m annoyed with our situation and even a little bit with her. I yelled the other day, a lot, because I could not ignore her and I really, really wanted to. We spent pretty much our whole day in conflict and I handled it poorly.

Well, you’ve been introduced to a big weakness of mine - how to handle conflict. I know sanctification is taking place because I manage these situations better now. And from everything God has taught me in this regard - ignoring, yelling, pretending you’re OK when you’re not - His grace sufficiently covers these. I really hope I get some time away from my daughter soon. Hours of it, so we can come together again and just forget the last few days of conflict. Sometimes, I need to miss my daughter.