Get Out of Jail Free

Do you ever associate two or more thoughts or events that are completely unrelated? When we do that we will always arrive at faulty conclusions. Faulty conclusions frustrate relationships.

A friend of mine received a pretty severe reprimand at his work. It was an unpleasant experience for him, but he bore up under it. The next day his powerful computer was missing form his desk. His manager told him someone else needed it and assured him there was no connection to the reprimand.

Now my friend had a choice: either believe the two incidents were unrelated, or make a wrong connection. He chose to believe his manager. By leaving the two events unconnected he prevented friction from developing. Had he believed that the two events were connected, regardless of his boss's assurances, he would have reported to work everyday with a cloud over his head.

You're In The Jailhouse Now

Mark comes home from work. He’s tired, so he doesn't greet his wife, Sally, with much enthusiasm. That morning she awoke late, causing more tension than usual in their morning routine. Sally makes a connection between those two separate incidents. Watch the process:

“Mark was irritated because I woke up late this morning. Mark doesn’t look happy now. He must still be mad about this morning. In fact, he’s probably still mad about that time last week with his mother. Who is he to be mad? He’s not perfect! He makes mistakes, but I guess I make the biggest ones. In fact, I’m always the problem. Why did wonderful Mark have to ruin his life by marrying stupid me. He thinks I’m stupid! I’ll fix him. And his mother. She’s the one who makes me look bad. She has never thought I am good enough for her darling boy . . .”

On it goes. Turn after turn, Sally winds her way into a labyrinth of confused feelings. A stone cold silence grips her.

The truth is, Mark had forgotten all about that morning. He wasn’t mad at Sally. In fact, he was a little mad at himself for being so grumpy when he came home. Now they have a problem. Sally’s chained in the dungeon and blames Mark for putting her there. Mark is upset because she blames him. There’s a long cold night ahead for these two lovebirds unless they can find a way to break the chain of wrong connections.

Catch a bird and put it in a cage. Now try to reach in and take the bird out. That bird will resist, fight, peck, bounce off the wires— anything but let you remove it from the cage. So, if Mark attempts to reason with Sally she might get even madder.

Or, he could ignore her. “She put herself in the dungeon, so she can get herself out!”he might think. And what about Sally? She’s pouting in her cold, dark dungeon cell. She’s waiting for Mark to make a move, to attempt to rescue her. Yet she’s still mad at him. Is there any way for Sally to get out of jail free?

Has Anybody Seen My Key?

It’s better to not make the wrong connection in the first place, but what do you do if you already have? At the core of every wrong connection is a false assumption. Sally could have asked Mark if something was troubling him, or she could have assumed everything was fine. Either one would have kept her out of jail. Now the only way out is to admit what she has done, forgive herself, and ask Mark to forgive her. Doesn't seem too hard, does it?

The strange thing about dungeons like Sally’s is that they aren’t really locked. The key is on the inside, with the prisoner. But if making wrong connections gets us into jail, pride keeps us there. We feel foolish for causing so much trouble over nothing. We don’t like feeling foolish, so we never reach for the key.

What is the key? Humility. Such an archaic sounding word in this age of self-assertion. When was the last time you saw an article on the values of humility in any secular magazine? But until we humble ourselves we remain prisoners of our own faulty connections. A whole world of love and joy is waiting for us outside. All we have to do is open the door and walk out.

Think, Act, Pray

1. In addition to chaining unrelated events together, Sally complicated the problem in other ways. Look at the paragraph where I recorded her thoughts. See if you can find at least one statement she made for each of the following:

• Shifting The Blame
• Unforgiveness
• Fault-finding
• Low self-esteem
• Expanding the sphere of the conflict

2. Think of a question Sally could have asked her husband that would have kept her out of jail.