“I don’t want my writing room and the gym to be in the same room,” I bowled my husband over with my (better) opinion before he had even closed his mouth. We hadn’t been in our new home for two hours, our household goods hadn’t arrived, and already I was ready to bite his head off.
“I’m not saying we can’t re-arrange the furniture,” he tried to recover with his more mild mode of discussion. How does he keep his voice down?
“But while they’re unloading the truck, I’m going to have them put the gym stuff, your desk and your keyboard in that room.”
“Why do you have to cram all of me into one tiny room?” I whined. “And if so, why can’t I have the bigger office?”
The stress of moving cultivates a perfect garden for strife in a marriage. Patrick and I had just pulled into the driveway of our rent house, the one we had picked sight unseen from pictures online. Fortunately, it lived up to our expectations.
We had driven 12 hours to get there with a dog and two cats in the car. Neither of us had eaten much. Needless to say, fuses were short.
Suddenly, I almost felt a tap on my shoulder. Drop it, I heard Him say.
“Can’t I at least make sure he understands my point of view and agrees to discuss it tomorrow?”
Drop it, The Holy Spirit repeated.
Finally, I listened. I refused to tuck my tail between my legs and pout. Instead of slipping in the last word, we both just stopped. And just as quickly, we chose to act like it never happened.
The next day, when the movers arrived, more than one occasion to argue presented itself. He stacked all of that stuff in the room that he insisted was mine. I forgot to tell him that we needed cash to pay the Internet installer. As the day wore on, we got tired and hot. One of us would fuss because the other sat down on the job.
Each time I was tempted to push a little too far, demand my own way or be easily angered, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, Drop it.
In the course of this move, so many little issues, ankle-biters, as my husband calls them, got swept under the rug. We let the sun go down on a couple small disagreements. But truthfully, when we got up in the morning, or turned around a few moments later, peace had been restored.
The Bible tells us not to let the sun go down on our anger. But I think there’s a gap between a disagreement and a quarrel. There is a point before anger bubbles up, a place just before the tipping point, when it’s good to simply drop a matter. Pretend it never happened.
It’s related to the Pollyanna theory. Sometimes, when we just smile anyway, we find something to smile about. Sometimes when we simply drop a matter, even smack in the middle of a debate, we find it wasn’t really an argument at all.
“Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out.” Proverbs 17:14
