All the time.
The question is, of course, how that conflict is managed (as I often tell couples in premarital counseling).
Learn to meet conflict head on and manage it effectively and, well, you’re on your way, way down the road to healthy living.
But what about when conflicts just cannot be resolved?
No matter how hard you try?
Just look around the landscape of international politics and this reality becomes strikingly obvious. And, this reality is, naturally, ridiculously frustrating for those of us “problem-solving” types.
(I don’t know about you, but I find I generally prefer to live in the blissful denial that I can fix things.)
Thankfully, it seems, I am finally old enough to realize, at least occasionally, that I can’t always fix everything.
And to calm my nerves when I come to this realization, I repeat the phrase Mark taught me: “It is what it is.”
(Who knew he was such a philosopher?)
It is what it is.
Sometimes packages cannot be tied up in neat little bows.
Sometimes we can part ways in disagreement while at the same time whispering prayers that each one receive grace and peace . . . grace and peace . . . grace and peace.
And sometimes we can love and lose . . . with some of the love lingering long past the loss.
In all of this I recall these words of Sufi poet, Rumi:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other, doesn’t make any sense.
And it’s good. Really good, in fact . . . lying in that field.
. . . all the while repeating to myself: “It is what it is.”
And I’ve never done anything harder.
Hi Amy
In the begining conflict started in Genesis. “Not Gensus Plant for startrek.” Bible GEN 2:15 And I will put emity between man and woman, and between man offspring and women, man will crush your head and you will strike his heel.
A book called It Is….What It Is! Move on by Donna Wells.
Cigar is just a cigar. “Also not from startrek next generation.”
You can’t cry over a spilt milk. Why Not? It going for $2.99 Gal at Safeway.
“And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18:27).
Can we truly say man fix thing. Or by the will of god we fix thing.
Give at a moment to ponder. I was out infront of the washington national cothrow on a sheet on the grass. “It been a good amount of time cent I was on my back on the grass.” I was pondering my hand in the grass. Looking up a the sky seeing a happy face. The tower of the cothrow and take picture of my church member upside down.
Enjoy your rest of the week Amy. What need to be fix will be fixing in do time. God been doing a good work. We my need to fix what we can on owner own level of understanding. If not just say “hakuna ma tata”. Just don’t totally forget it. But don’t let give you any grey hear on you.
You’re Friend
Will
i love that poem. here’s praying that the grass in that field embraces you today.
i love that poem. here’s praying that the grass in that field embraces you today.
Wow. I have to post this on a discussion board I am on. We need this idea of lying down in the field “beyond right and wrongdoing” in the Anglican Communion right now. So much hurt and conflict that seems with end. If we could all find that field.
Thanks for this … I needed the reminder that “it is what it is”.