"What Do You Do with a Broken Relationship?"

That's the title of a helpful little booklet from Radio Bible Class, which you can download here.

I would only add two points to the booklet's advice and undergird one point that is made there:

1. It's important to be in constant prayer about the broken relationship, whatever step you may be taking. Even if the other person with whom you are in conflict refuses to reconcile, it's important that you spare damage to your own psyche and spirit by praying for that other person.

2. It's important to enlist the counsel of one trusted Christian friend, maybe a counselor or a pastor. This is less about "venting" than it is about getting the input of someone who can tell us the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

3. This is a hard one, especially for a certain loquacious pastor I know, who has the gift of gab: Don't tell everyone in sight about your conflicted relationship. That's apt only to compound the problem. Jesus gives a process for dealing with conflicts which arise among Christians, here.

I happened on the link to What Do You Do with a Broken Relationship? on today's daily devotion in Our Daily Bread.