Our focus is on repairing broken relationships.

After we find out it won’t work to convict, convince, coerce or control the other person, our tendency is to start making excuses. The first excuse is to say, “I don’t care.” But you do care. It is your dad, your mom, your sibling or your child. It could be anyone.

And it is frustrating to feel so powerless and unable to do anything about the current situation. Nothing you have tried in the past has worked. So instead of admitting you can’t fix it, you find yourself making excuses and pretending not to care.

This is such an unhealthy approach because when we turn our back on any relationship that we really do care about and try to convince ourselves or others that we don’t care, then we end up carrying all of the baggage, frustration, anger and emotion from that relationship into other relationships. And that causes relational conflict in other relationships that you can’t seem to resolve because you really don’t understand what is fueling that conflict.

You never really don’t leave it behind. You just drag it along into the future and it is left unresolved. You can sweep it under the rug for a while, but that won’t work for long. Unfortunately, these things have a way of bubbling to the surface somewhere along the way. Trying to turn your back and say, “I don’t care” is often just setting yourself up for history to repeat itself.

A second excuse is to say, “I already tried.” This excuse implies you are done. You have tried. In your opinion, you have done your part. You are ready to check out on the relationship. It is up to them now. You are waiting on someone else to fix it.

Please remember the goal in reassembling a relationship is to have no regret. None of us can be responsible to reconcile a relationship on our own. We can only do what we can do. Reconciliation requires participation on the part of two people.

This is why it is important to be able to come to the end of the day and know you have no regrets for how you have handled your part of the relationship. Or taken to the extreme, to get to the end of your life (or their life) and have no regret about your part in the relationship. Maybe it never worked out or it never got to where you would have hoped it would get to, but you can do your part, and you can live with no regret.

Steve Greene is the lead pastor at The Point in Seymour. You may email him at [email protected]. His weekly blog can be found at pastorgreene.wordpress.com. Send comments to [email protected].