Much of our life movement has been around avoiding pain. To engage with conflict in a life-giving way we need to start working from a place of love.
For most of us conflict is just associated with pain. To cope, we’ve learnt to separate what we like and what we reject both in ourselves and in others. In this way we try to avoid fighting, to cover the tensions we feel or to defend ourselves against a perceived threat. We end up thinking some people are ‘wonderful’ while others we put down as ‘awful’. This is a common pattern in conflict, but is not a life-giving one.
Conflict will always be part of our human condition. So how can we find transformative, life-giving ways with it? Continue reading Finding Healing on the Path of Pain →
From childhood we’ve all sensed imbalances of power. In most relationships, though often unspoken, we feel we are being continually measured, pegged at different levels. We all know who’s stronger than us – whether verbally, emotionally or physically – and we know who can punish or frighten us. We sense where we are placed in our social circles, whether at the centre as the ‘queen bee’, or further out towards the fringe.
Each of our early experiences are peopled with memories which touched us, both the good and the painful. The patterns we each developed to flourish and to survive then are the same as those we still use today. That particular person or event from our past is long gone, but our learnt patterns of relating remain. We continue to see ourselves and others (even God) through this lens.
Continue reading Childhood Hurts – Blockage Or Bridge? →
The way we spend money says a lot about us
A lot of the ways we see ourselves was taught us by our family. It’s like we’re plants that have been given our shape by a well-intentioned gardener and now, as adults, we need to come into our God-intentioned shape.
If we think back, we can see how our attitude to money was shaped. Do we still see those dynamics in the ways we spend and save now? Do we value ourselves more or less according to what we have? Continue reading The more we dig, the more we find! →
tools for real relationships
