Don’t Go to Bed With Dirty Dishes in the Sink
How many times have you let a sink full of dirty dishes sit overnight? You wake the next day only to find food caked on so hard you have to scrub and scrub and scrub.
“Why didn’t I just wash them last night?” I can get to it now and throw off my whole morning or I can just leave the dishes for another time.
Similarly, in life and relationships if we don’t deal with our problems, anger, offense, etc the situations tend to get worse. When you argued last night and decided to just leave it til morning, you left room for things to fester. Now there’s room/time for you to consider all the other ways you’ve been wronged. Just like the hardened food on those dirty dishes, your heart has become hardened towards the offender - spouse, child, parent, sibling, co-worker...
Of course, it’s ok to take a moment to cool off when necessary, just don’t allow to much time to go by without resolving things. When you take too much time you give yourself the opportunity to make inaccurate assumptions and pile on extras that have nothing to do with the original disagreement.
It may be tough but it’s worth having the tough conversations to maintain successful relationships.