What Went Well? The Pain and the Joy We Found in Conflict

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I could feel the tension rising.

I could feel the tension rising inside of me—my emotions, my thoughts.

I could feel the tension rising in the words—the tone, the attitude.

At first, I thought it was just a figment of my imagination. Perhaps I was just too sensitive. Maybe I was having another bad day. Was I making a mountain out of a molehill?

No, there was something there. The message felt harsh. There seemed to be some underlying feeling, some subtle message that she was trying to communicate.

Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint what was going on. There seemed to be a barrier, a wedge forming between us. It had been building for a few weeks now, maybe even months.

The next text felt sharp—mine, hers. Our responses began bouncing off each other, hitting each other harshly, jumping back and forth, feeding upon each other, fueling whatever was smoking and brewing underneath.

Rumbling, trembling below the surface, something was about to explode.

Conflict. 

We could both feel it, no doubt.

We had a choice. 

We could let things continue to escalate between us, remain silent, push it under the rug, wait it out, hope the temperature would go down by itself.

Or we could say “stop,” “enough,” make an intentional effort to intervene, expose the junk underneath, push hard against the wedge between us, and seek unity, peace, and reconciliation.

It was bugging me, nagging at me constantly.

“Could we talk? I’ve felt some tension between us in our last text exchanges. Maybe it would be good to talk face-to-face instead of through texts and emails.”

She agreed, so we arranged a time to meet during the week.

I dreaded it, but knew it had to happen. We had no choice but to talk.

We both cared deeply for one another as friends, as colleagues, and our relationship was important to both of us.

As much as we both didn’t want to engage in this difficult conversation, it was the only way to rebuild the relationship bridge that was starting to crack and sway. We had to fix it now before it crashed and burned.

The Outcome

The conversation was hard, long, painful, and tiring. But it was good. It ended well, and our broken relationship was restored. Reconciliation happened.

After we talked for four hours, my colleague asked if we could capture some of our learning from our process of conflict resolution. We both put those in writing for later reference. Our hope was that we would remember the good things that happened, learn from the process, and perhaps be able to share our experience with others.

That was our hope for those of you reading this article when we co-wrote this together.

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Preparing for Our Difficult Conversation:

My Colleague:

I thought through my own heart issues in advance, trying to put in writing exactly what was bugging me. I tried to be as honest as I could about my own motivations, intentions, thoughts, and feelings about what was going on between us. 

I worked on getting myself into an inner posture of listening, so that I could hear what the situations were like for my colleague. I tried to get my heart in a place of humility and readiness to acknowledge the part I had played in making things worse or creating problems in the midst of our chat dialogues. 

I arranged my schedule to not have a time limit in mind in case our conversation needed to go longer than planned or I needed downtime to process afterward. While I didn’t feel like it was needed, I went ahead and asked my colleague if she thought it would be helpful to have a third party present as a witness and to help us navigate this difficult topic. 

Me:

I spent some time in prayer and mindfulness to prepare my heart and to make sure that I was in the right posture to listen well with “other-centered shoes.” I wanted to be ready to take responsibility and acknowledge where I needed to apologize, perhaps ways that I had hurt my colleague and friend along the way.

I prayed for courage to bring up difficult topics in a loving and gracious way—ways that would be helpful and not hurtful to our relationship. I reflected deeply by journaling beforehand and writing out some of the issues that were bothering me in our relationship. I spent time reading back through emails and marking down dates of correspondence so that I could give specific examples during our conversation and not speak in generalities. I also kept an open schedule, with nothing planned after our meeting, in case we needed some extra time for our conversation to end well.

What We Did Well During the Conversation:

My Colleague:

We started out by connecting at a personal level and expressing care about one another’s lives. We kept this time brief. I started with a confession of something I’d already seen in myself that related to where we were headed in the course of the conversation. I aimed to listen and to truly hear the impact of my texts and other forms of communication on my colleague. 

When needed, I honestly confessed what I could about the roles I had played in the various situations. I did not over-confess or take all the blame. I avoided any attacking language. I gave space for her part of the story, noticing when I just needed to listen and when I needed to engage with it (depending on how it tied into our topic at hand). Throughout the conversation, I apologized regularly and asked forgiveness for areas I was thoughtless, careless, and had, at times, wronged my friend and colleague. 

We took a much-needed break in the middle of the conversation. We checked in with each other on how we were with time, making sure to respect each other’s previous commitments and schedules. We paused to be silent and to reflect, when we regularly checked in to see if there was anything unsettled that we still needed to talk through. Sometimes, I used a pause to re-adjust my heart back to a more other-centered, humble posture, which isn’t my natural go-to place in difficult conversations. 

Me: 

I tried to listen well to my colleague’s story, to reflect back what I heard, and not to interrupt. I especially made an intentional effort to hold back when I had the urge to defend myself or to put the blame back on her. I tried to avoid “you” statements, keeping it to “I” statements in my dialogue. 

I also tried to be in-tune and aware of my physiological symptoms and responses during the conversation, when I was feeling defensive, angry, hurt, etc. When I felt tension rising inside of me, I remembered to breathe deeply and to pause before speaking. When I recognized that I had hurt my colleague, I confessed my wrongs and asked her for forgiveness. I also tried to take some risks and courageously bring up difficult situations in which I had been hurt, even if I felt uncomfortable. 

What We Did Well After Our Conversation:

My Colleague:

Instead of waiting until the next day, I took some time to reflect and to process our conversation in writing before I tried to go to sleep. That made it easier for my brain to rest. I asked my colleague if we could capture our learning from this experience in a document so that we could reference it later to help us communicate better in the future.

Just this week, my colleague sent me a voice message, rather than a text (one of our action steps) and shared how one of my recent texts had come across (the negative tone and implications she heard in it). Sharing as soon as those feelings came up was something we committed to. I was really grateful for this and it reminded me of the action steps we said we’d take.  

Me:

I set some time aside the next morning to journal and to reflect on our conversation. I wrote down my feelings and thoughts about the experience in the shared document and made note of lessons learned along the way. We agreed to try to communicate in the future, as much as possible, through voicemail or face-to-face conversation about difficult topics, rather than through written texts or emails. We also took some time separately to reflect on what we felt the other person did well in the course of the conversation that was helpful to us. We even ended by writing out what we were thankful and grateful for—even in the conflict.

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In the End

In the gratitude and thankfulness exercise, we realized that our relationship with each other was important to both of us. Although tension and conflict are bound to arise in any personal and working relationship, we know that taking intentional steps to resolve conflict is the best way to move ahead together in a healthy way. 

Although the journey was hard and painful, we are both thankful that we did the hard work of talking it through and have plans to address it well and earlier in the future. There is a certain joy in being on the other side of that difficult conversation, being able to re-start again with some co-created guidelines that will help our communication.

Most importantly, we have agreed to “nip it” as soon as one of us begins to sense the slightest tension, smell the faintest hint of smoke rising, or hear the smallest crack.

Reconciliation, restoration, reunion. It’s all worth it.