Proverbs 15:18
Some
people have a way of stirring up trouble. When they enter a room, or when they
come into a new situation, they seem to find the center of the record and start
it spinning. They don’t seem to be happy, and of course they never really are
happy, unless they can stir things up.
Many
of us have family members who are like that. They stir up conflict and strife.
Perhaps they always swing the conversation toward controversial topics. Perhaps
alcohol, what I call “liquid stupid,” gets flowing and they don’t know how to
shut up.
By
contrast there are some folks who just seem to bring calm to any situation.
They don’t get “spun up” when others seem to be spinning out of control. They
have a way of bring a non-anxious presence into the room. I like it when these
folks are around. They seem to have a perspective about the current struggles
that make them seem small and manageable. They exude quiet confidence.
Because
they have perspective, the current struggle is relatively small. They are able
to enter a conflict and help all sides gain some perspective. They don’t take
the aggression and anger being directed at them personally. They act as a
pressure relief value for the parties. Instead of reacting to the anger, they
let it pass right by them and out of the room. And when that happens, the
temperature in the room drops.
The
one quality mentioned for these kinds of people is patience. If we are willing
to wait, to hear people out, to not react, then we are able to diffuse the tension.
But patience must be practiced. It takes effort to not react, even on the
inside. Some things just push our buttons, and it takes effort to find the
buttons in our life and figure out how to unwire them. Many people don’t take
time to do this. They don’t take time to pay attention to their own reactions
and then figure out why they reacted they way they did.