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The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.
- Patricia Barrett
A Prayer to Break the Cycle of Difficult Relationships
I had the pleasure of meeting Guideposts reader Jenny Olin recently. Jenny lives in the town where my daughter Mary was participating in a summer dance intensive. Jenny‘s a social worker who helps people cope with troubled relationships.
As she described her job to me, Jenny mentioned that she often works with just one person in an at-risk relationship. “People think it takes both people to change things,” she said. “But often it only takes one to break a negative cycle.”
I thought of a difficulty I face with a friend, a situation that repeats itself and frequently leaves me frustrated and angry. It’s clear the other person is not going to (or is unable to) change. But I wondered: Was there a way to break the cycle of aggravation?
I decided to pray about it. Instead of asking God to change the other person or give me patience, I asked for perspective on how to handle the situation differently. I asked to see new ways to respond to familiar offenses. I asked for wisdom and insight and humility.
It’s amazing what God can do when my heart is open to change. For when I asked to see how I could improve the relationship with my friend, I saw the cycle for what it was. I could see how to break it—and how to move the relationship on to better, healthier ground.
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Julia Attaway is a freelance writer, homeschooler and mother of five. She is the editor of Daily Guideposts: Your First Year of Motherhood, a book of devotions for first-time moms. She lives in New York.
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Julia,
Thank you for the unexpected gift of sharing my words with Guideposts readers. We tend to believe it is a huge task to break a negative relationship cycle. The truth is, most of the time all it takes is doing one small thing different, consistently. It’s a simple idea with so much power to heal.
Why do we believe it is so hard, if not impossible, to break a negative cycle? Several reasons, including:
•We’ve done and said everything we can think of to get someone to change.
•We play the Blame Game. It sounds something like this: “It’s all his/her fault. IF ONLY (s)he would [fill in the blank], this problem wouldn’t exist.”
•We’ve even prayed about it. When we don’t receive a solution to the problem, we may play the Blame Game again, this time with God.
It’s no wonder we decide no solution exits!
The solution you chose to break your pattern of frustration towards a friend is a great model for people of faith who feel stuck. You:
•recognized the solutions you used were not producing the results you want,
•decided to stop waiting for the other person to make the first move, and looked at what you could do differently to have a positive impact on your relationship,
•turned to God, the #1 source of power for healthy change, for a solution,
•stopped asking God repeatedly for what wasn’t solving the problem (change the other person, give you patience), and
•did one thing different (opened your heart to God by changing what you ask from God).
I expect you have a 4-fold result:
•you feel better about yourself,
•you feel better about God,
•you feel better about your friend, and
•your friend feels better about you.
Even if we’re sure we’ve tried and said everything, we haven’t. The number of solutions is unlimited. Most of the time we CAN move out of our negative relationship cycle quickly and easily. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly. Once we change our own behavior in a positive direction – do one small thing different – we are likely to see a positive change in the person with whom we’re in conflict.
Even those of us dubbed “relationship experts” become stuck in these negative cycles. I have my share of praying for wisdom, insight, and humility to do. I pray for hope, too.
Another marriage expert Michele Weiner-Davis, MSW says, “Hopelessness is the cancer of marriage.” It applies to all relationships.
I am passionate about helping people have healthy relationships. I welcome your readers to visit and, if they choose, subscribe to my blog http://creatinghealthyrelationships.wordpress.com/. They will receive more relationship helps. While I tend to focus on marriage, these helps are usually useful in all kinds of relationships.
Abundant blessings,
Jenny Olin, LCSW