What to do when you have a family member thats hard to love

Hey, welcome to Every Prayer Matters Blog. My name is Justice Rodriguez, and I help mommas like you implement the “How To” in a powerful prayer life as you navigate through your life as a wife and mother.

In today’s blog, we will be talking about what to do when you have a family member that’s hard to love! 

This blog aims to help you find a way to deal with difficult family members and people in general by giving you 10 steps to consider!

There are affiliate links within this blog because I use them and believe they can help you make your mommy’s life more fun and support your self-care. Please note that this blog is about my personal story and adventure. I’m not a doctor or a professional to give you medical advice. I’m simply a wife, a mommy of 2, and a developing business owner sold out for Jesus who wants to encourage you in your prayer life because I believe Every Prayer Matters To God!

This was such a hard, heavy but humbling topic to write about . as I reflected on my life and thinking about the obvious all those difficult or hard family member or people that I have in my life or had and I was so grateful that God reminded me that at some point and time we are all the difficult one to love and I believe remembering that and chewing on that for a minute with help us to remain humble for the rest of the blog.

when hard situations with family or even friends that became family would come I don’t know about you but I would already have my running shoes on and be jogging to the exit because I didn’t wanna face it, I didn’t wanna have to be vulnerable or deal with the back and forth, risk the opportunity for them to lie to me again, gaslight me, or tell me something to make me feel bad for this gut feeling I couldn’t shake when it came to them and their actions.

As I was thinking about this topic I couldn’t help but think about Jesus and the Pharisees and how many times they gave him a hard time (Matthew 16:1-12, Matthew 22:15-22). talk about a difficult set of people or what about when Jesus went back to his hometown and was rejected by his people(Luke 4:16-30).

There are so many times he could have just said you know what you guys are hard to love or even die for, I’m out! but he didn’t and that’s the piece of encouragement that I want to leave you with .. he could have been he didn’t.

( Loving Those Who Are Hard To Love)

Okay, justice but where does that leave me? A lot! 

You probably already understand we are to be like Jesus but you are nowhere near as patient yet or you have given them so many opportunities to come around and make things right but you’re at your end with them.

I’ve been there! I’m unfortunately not perfect and I get to that point sometimes but thank God for his grace and mercy. 

The one thing  I don’t want you to do is to just quickly cut them off (unless they are mentally or physically abusive then you may need to seek further help ) because the one thing that the cut-off culture won’t tell you is about the residue that’s left after. Once you have calmed down, once you have time to reflect on what was said and done, that is, unfortunately, one of the side effects of it.

(Look for a Good Book? Check This Out !)

 In my best efforts to keep you away from that residue, if you are in The Young Faithful Mama Support Group you have already seen my #TipTuesday Live and if you haven’t gotten your Checklist that goes with this blog don’t forget to click the link at the end of this blog to get into my Freebie Folder.

The checklist is for you to go through as you’re in the process, take your time to go down the list and mark each of the 10 steps from 1-10. This is to help you take the more healthy route and have an extra sense of peace after you make your final decision.

but I wanted to share a few of the tips that helped me as I dealt with hard to love family members 

1. Pray for them 
2. Don’t hold things in your heart against them (unforgiveness, jealousy, bitterness, etc.)
3. Open up a clear line of communication about how you feel 
4. put yourself in their shoes 
5. extend grace 
6. try your best to find common ground 
7. set boundaries
8. strive for connection, not control 
9. learn to accept them as they are 
10. give them distance 

(Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Difficult People: Over 325 Ready-to-Use Words and Phrases for Working with Challenging Personalities)

I pray that this has encouraged you, if so don’t forget to like, comment because I love your feedback and sharing is caring! 

Have you gotten into my freebie folder yet? What are you waiting for!

(Click Here To Get Access to My Freebie Folder)

If you are interested in learning more about what I offer head over to https://www.theyoungfaithfulmama.com/services