When you can't get a handle on it
By Bishop Woodie W. White
There are times when you just can't get a "handle" on things! Life in general, a relationship, some special task calls for steadiness. Your best efforts seem inadequate. There are times when you become aware of the solution required to bring resolution to the conflict, problem or breach. Yet it remains illusive.
It is frustrating! Armed with all the appropriate data, even skills, one may still plough unproductively and perhaps unconstructively in the situation. It becomes confusing often especially when one is certain that all the "right" responses are being applied. It's supposed to work! But it doesn't!
Or perhaps the situation seems resolved. You may conclude the problem is solved, the relationship healed, reconciliation is achieved. It may well appear the task has been accomplished. You say to yourself, "I've finally got a handle on it." To your great disappointment, you discover you don't.
It may have been that the resolution was fragile, or the reconciliation insincere. Or new conflicts may arise. Best efforts and plans crumble.
I wanted so to make the relationship a good one. While the person and I were not especially close, I certainly did not desire for there to continue to be friction. I reasoned we both were missing something because the wall divided us, not allowing the opportunity to go beyond the conflict to see the positive in each other. We could not change the past circumstance that was the cause of the wall. So I was determined that somehow a new relationship could be achieved.
I was wrong. The disdain the person held was too deep. It bordered on hatred. We were civil when we met, but it did not take much for civility to fade and animosity to appear. Nothing I tried worked and the other person made no pretense of trying.
Discouraged, I finally admitted to my wife, I was drained of trying to get a handle on the situation. It appeared that I had exhausted every possible effort to bring resolution. She agreed, and said with emphasis, "You're right, Woodie, there is nothing you can do!"
I knew what she meant. It was the admonition that some things are beyond human labor to achieve. Not even my desiring of a better relationship and my sincere efforts could accomplish the noble goal: a healthy, productive relationship that would heal the breach. So I stopped trying. I would continue to be courteous as I had always been, but would no longer go to extraordinary lengths to reach out to make right a broken and troubled relationship. I would, however, continue to pray for healing and reconciliation.
Well, I suppose that's the way it goes sometimes in life. After you've turned it upside down and sideways. Observed, examined and analyzed. Massaged, caressed and confessed. After you've confronted, consulted and counseled. After you've pampered, propositioned and prayed. Nothing will have changed! The relationship is still broken, the wound unhealed, the conflict unresolved. It becomes utterly clear there is nothing else one can do. Absolutely nothing!
Perhaps that is the moment, when human effort is totally futile, that one must let go and let God! And then, watch God act as only God can!
Copyright 2005 United Methodist Reporter. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Retired United Methodist Bishop Woodie W. White currently serves as bishop-in-resident at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Ga.