Apr 10
7
To fight aint right!!
Every weekday morning, my brother goes to a gospel study class at our church before high school. My bedroom is right next to our bathroom. Needless to say…I get awakened quite often as he goes to get ready around five am. Sometimes I get really ticked that he left the door open and the light on too bright for me to comfortably doze off without doing something about the situation. If I do get up to turn off the light, sometimes I find that he left his pajama shirt on the floor or maybe his hair products in disarray on the countertop. That ticks me off even more. Sometimes, by the time I actually get back to my bed, I am so worked up about the whole ordeal that I can’t go back to sleep anyway, even after I resolved the light issue. If that happens, when I see him next I fuss at him for doing such a “terrible” thing.
Last night, I went to church and was struck a lot by something we talked about that I’m pretty sure can relate to any religion or person: contention or fighting, quarreling/living out of harmony with another person or situation. The instructor asked my sister and me if we ever have contention with each other. My sister’s sarcastic reply was that we didn’t. Of course either one of us could recall at least a few times that on most given days that one or both of us were upset with the other over something that really wasn’t the biggest deal.
The instructor then asked one of the other people in the class if she and her husband ever had contention. She responded by saying that she and her husband were a bad example of married couples when it came to this because truthfully they didn’t really have all that much contention. I have known the couple and actually believed that to be true because they are both very nice people that care a lot for each other in a way that shows. The instructor then responded that he and his wife didn’t really contend either.
For some reason that really hit me in an insight gaining kind of way because it said to me that it really is possible to have relationships in which you get along well most of the time. I was thinking about every time that I get ticked over something small and how it causes negative feelings between family members like my brother’s shirt on the floor or him leaving the light on to keep me awake. Maybe those things really aren’t that big of a deal after all and if we choose not to get upset over little things our lives will be better. What do you think? Is a family member or friend worth enough to you that you can spend more time noticing the good in them instead of the simple mistakes?
