Conflict

            No great story is without conflict. We know this and have even come to expect it in the movies we see and books we read; but it is not the conflict itself that draws us back each time. It’s what the conflict produces. When conflict arises, it may scare or upset us at first but by the end we know the reason the story was worth telling.

In the beginning of our relationship, it seemed that all my wife and I ever did was work out issues. A hurtful word here, a misinterpreted situation there and a smorgasbord of insecurities made for some pretty good practice in our problem-solving skills. What was interesting though was that instead of all of these driving us apart, we just became closer and closer. At one point, we both caught on to this phenomenon and began to secretly rejoice whenever conflict arose because we knew that by the end of it we’d reach another level of intimacy we hadn’t experienced before.

None of us can change the fact that conflict either does or will exist in our relationships at times. We can however change the way we see it when it does come. If we believe that conflict is a threat, then our energies will be spent in avoiding or denying its existence; both of which produce anxiety, not peace. But if we realize that conflict is an invitation to intimacy, though it may scare or upset us at first, we can find out why our own      story is worth telling.