“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao Tzu

I come by conflict avoidance honestly. By that I mean it’s deeply steeped in my family history. I never heard my parents argue when I was growing up. Assuming that they did instead of just avoid all conflict, they must have done it entirely behind closed doors. As a Presbyterian pastor, my dear dad was so good being with people suffering crisis and loss but when it came to conflict, he also had a gift for just not responding.

I remember when I was in college, I took the car I had to him because it was overheating. He was refilling the radiator from the garden hose as I trailed around behind him. At one point I said, “Dad, I think there is a better way to do that.” He didn’t respond. He didn’t argue that he had been around cars a lot longer than I had or point out that I brought the car to him, he just simply didn’t say anything until it was refilled. Then he looked up with a big, bright smile and said, “There, it’s done!”

Read the rest of this post that I posted here at the Pointless Overthinking blog