Let it go

There is some sort of disconnect that happens when your family members get to the age where you have to choose whether they know what they are doing or saying or if they are just continuing to say more and more without considering the consequences of what they are saying to the recipient.    I can see where I myself have taken too much ownership of hurtful comments of extended family as if I should expect people to have manners etc.   Well......they should, but my reaction does effect the outcome.   Topics which should obviously be offensive to me and my family seem to come more freely at me and I feel like I have gone to 'not caring' what they are saying and will stay tight lipped.   It is such a careful dance.   What good does it do to argue????   It just makes them more upset and wound tight as they want to be right and then it is something more for me to think about.   It is much easier to just let it go. 

Letting it go is tough thing to teach.   Isn't it true that everyone wants to be important and right?   No one wants to hear that you or they have pissed someone off.   Inwardly pissed or inwardly ignoring and contemplating how it doesn't have to own me trip through my brain lately.   Amazingly offensive comments to all that I value just seem not to matter in light of my own life and eternity.   God willing the offenders and offendees all gather in the peace of Christ on the last day, we won't care whether the conservatives and liberals want to be right or were right.   It won't matter.   Only Christ and our undeserved forgiveness and salvation will matter and that is true now too.   It is already completed.   Our nerve endings may still take a beating now but that is not where we find our hope.   And.......I can understand that now and may forget tomorrow but it is true.   Thankful I can hang onto that today.