Raise your hand if you have had to have hard conversations in your life.
I’m betting you are raising your hand right now (I mean, at least, in your mind because raising your hand arbitrarily would look weird) because the truth is that if you are alive and breathing you are going to have conflict.
Conflicts with friends, family, and strangers happen over ideas, politics, and religion happen all the time. And if you’re like most humans, (except maybe enneagram 8s) the idea of conflict is terrifying and exhausting. I know it can be for me.
So this week on the podcast Melanie Weldon-Soiset, Fellowship Program Director at Sojourners and aspiring Methodist Pastor, walks us through how to have hard conversations with grace, and practice self-care in the process.
Melanie’s story includes growing up in Georgia, to serving all over the world, to working as a teaching pastor at a large church in Shanghai, China. After working there for five years, she was eventually edged out due to her sex– and as an act of holy defiance, threw herself her own farewell party.
Melanie has had to learn how to choose her battles over the years when it comes to disagreeing with others. Through those experiences, she has learned how to ask questions in order to know how to respond to conflict. A question she asks herself is: is this annoying or abusive?
For when it’s just annoying: some ideas are annoying because she isn’t used to them, but has found that there is often more to the issue at hand. In some cases, things she found annoying has shown her how much bigger God is. And in some cases, she has learned to laugh things off.
For when it’s abusive: it’s really important to have safe places and know when it’s time to leave. When her church slowly edged her out of her teaching position due to her sex. It was critical for her to know when it was time to leave, and throw herself a farewell party. It was also important for her to have safe spaces and people she could process with, it was ok for her to leave an abusive situation.
Throughout some truly trying situations, she has learned to practice what is called an oxygen mask theology: learning to take care of herself before she tries to help anyone else.
Melanie spent the next several years practicing self-care and processing the hurt she had gone through. Through it all, she found that God was a God of resurrection and in much that she does, continues to fight for justice today.
Listen to the full story, in all it’s glory here.