Young and stupid is expected. Old and stupid is just stupid.

How bad do you have to go to use this?!

I dropped Pam off at the Eugene airport at about 3:45 a.m. for her 5:20 flight to Denver and from thence to Grand Rapids. She'll spend the next 10 days with her mother who turns 95 tomorrow as well as helping out her younger brother who lives there and carries the burden of managing her...life. Pam will stay in the extra bedroom of her mom's independent living apartment.
Normally I feel burdened and struggle with things while she's gone. It's my sacrifice so she can be a good daughter. (I'm mostly kidding.) But this time it's Pam who will have the challenge. As her mom ages things get more complicated and her needs more demanding. If you know Pam you understand that she is all about helping in any way she can. That kind spirit will be put to the test this visit.

After breakfast I worked on some of my material for the upcoming Brazil trip. One of the things I'll do there is a series of sessions with pastors and elders on church leadership. This morning I made the slides I'll use while we talk about conflict resolution. I don't remember where I saw this diagram decades ago so I can't cite the originator but he nailed it here.

Step one in conflict resolution is determining the nature of the point of contention. To do that we can place the issue on a chart that identifies (X axis) how confident I am that I have the correct view or position and (Y axis) how important the issue is.

Too often we incorrectly locate the issue creating conflict. We have a tendency to push everything into the upper right quadrant, identifying it as very important and something about which we know we hold the right view.

If we could muster up enough objectivity I suspect we'd find we often make mountains out of molehills (i.e. push what is really a lower left issue into an upper right issue).

What questions can I ask myself that will help me reach an objective perspective? How can I determine where on the chart the issue behind this conflict should be placed?

Note: this assumes that there is indeed a real issue involved. Sometimes the conflict is really between two people or parties and the issue cited as causal is just dressing that allows them to sound high minded when in reality it's personal. Or the issue on the table covers a deeper conflict about something too hard to discuss openly.

Sadly, too often congregational battle lines are drawn so early and wounds inflicted so brutally that pulling back to use this grid is all but impossible...apart from a yielding to God's Spirit with whom all things are possible! An outside and objective mediator can often help reach that point.

OK, here's where I think this grid gets especially powerful:
Marriage.

That is, the same dynamics apply to marital conflict. How often do couples drive a stake in the ground and refuse to yield on something that is one of the other three quadrants? If/when one of them yields to the will of the other they do so with bitterness and resentment that carries into the next disagreement, with each subsequent conflict starting out with the intensity seen at the end of the last one.

As I sit here typing this I'm trying to think of the upper right disagreements I've had with Pam over almost 47 years of marriage. Truth is, I can only think of one or two and in each case she was right and I was wrong.

Now consider two extremes. The first is the husband or wife who treats everything ("Where should we go on vacation?") as a 10/10. Even the mundane ("Dinner out or eat in?") becomes a line in the sand. Why? A: there are underlying personal issues that probably require professional insight.

Or, the person who passively yields on every matter that arises with the "go along to get along" approach. That quickly starts to feel like apathy and a perverse kind of dishonesty. "Is there nothing you care about enough to even go back and forth on?!"

There's more here, isn't there?!

• What's an appropriate level of energy to put into something in each of the other quadrants? 
• Which rates higher, an important issue with low confidence or a less important issue with high confidence? 
• If it truly is an upper right issue how should I handle it? 
• If it's a lower left issue should I even say anything? Or just acquiesce? 

I wish I could remember where I saw this graph because it's golden and somebody should be getting a lot of credit for their insight.

OK, this went on longer than I expected. I started writing this as I at my breakfast, took a break to feed the animals, and while doing so realized I cannot safely use power tools when it's 31 degrees out. So I came back in to the heat of the wood stove and finished this post. It's now coming on 9 a.m. and the temp is up to a balmy 34 degrees. But with the sun finally over the tops of the trees it should get warmer quickly. So I'm going to hit "Publish." I may be back later today if there's aught to report, but don't hold your breath.