How Impatience Leads to Rocky Friendships
A look into impatience, hurt, and ultimately, forgiveness.
I have been reflecting a lot lately on my certain personality traits that can slip into a sin. Most recently I’ve been reflecting on my impatience. I am an extremely impatient person. This comes out in a variety of ways. Impatient with others and God because I want things done my way and on my timeline. Impatient with my business because I want it to grow at the pace I think it should and in turn, I do too much at once and all of it just fails. I’ve learned to focus here to really grow it and I’m starting to see the fruit of that mindset shift and approach. Impatient with sharing my story that I hurt friends in the way I share. This is the biggest point I’ve been reflecting on lately.
If you’ve been following my Instagram stories, you know that my son was recently hospitalized for malnourishment. I had several people in my life that made me feel like this was my fault or that I should have caught it sooner; I don’t think this was their intention but that’s how it made me feel. I “called out” two friends in particular when sharing this on my stories and I didn’t think it would hurt them because I didn’t use their names. However, I was quickly corrected that because I singled them out and even worse, shared publicly before having a private conversation with them first really hurt them. In turn, a letter I wrote to each of them explaining how I felt but expressing my love and gratefulness for their friendship was not received well. I understand their perspective 100%. I messed up. I’ve offered private and public apologies and I’m truly sincere in that because what I did and how I went about trying to resolve this conflict was not the right way.
Last summer when I was manic I inadvertently hurt three other friends. One was again, “calling out” a friend who I differ with politically. Again, I thought the anonymity and saying I still care for this friend when saying I disagreed wouldn’t be received as injury. The two other friendships I hurt by my choice of words and a lot of tone and context is lost in text to by saying the wrong things, I’ve hurt them.
However, I’m still hurt. I’m sad that right now these friendships are on ice. These are five friendships I hold very dear to my heart. The two that I hurt most recently are some of the deepest and most important friendships in my life right now. Both were the closest to our crises last year during my mania. They were two that were honest with me even though it meant me getting angry and causing a riff in our friendship. They are two of the most used sitters for my daughter when ever we need a quick watch. Namely, when my son was born, when I was receiving psychiatric care, when my son was sick and I was in the hospital with him and my husband had to work. They aren’t just friends, they’re family. And being at odds with family is a deeper loss than being at odds with friends.
All of this to say, I’m at peace now turning it over to God to heal these relationships in His time and in His way. What a freeing feeling and a gentle place to rest. But it took me a LONG time to react this way and it’s not my first instinct; through God’s grace, he has given me a heart of flesh and a peace that passes understanding. For that, I am so grateful.
