And let’s just say you are. Pro-vaccine and your sister-in-law is against vaccines. It does not matter your position or your sister-in-law’s position, okay? It does not matter. You’re one,  she’s the other. Both of you feel very strongly about this, okay? 

At the end of the day, right? People who are pro or anti-vaccine both want the same thing, which is that we all want to feel safe, okay? We all want to feel safe, and one group of people thinks that the best way to feel safe is to vaccinate children against common diseases.

The other person thinks that the vaccines themselves are dangerous and they believe that the best way to keep people safe is to not put those substances in their body. Right? That’s just in general, the pro con argument for vaccines. Obviously there’s many more nuances and details that we could go into, but in general, that’s what it’s. Okay.

So you believe that the best way to keep people safe is through vaccinating the kids. Okay. And it probably hurts you deeply that your sister-in-law thinks that you don’t care about keeping people safe. ’cause at the end of the day, she thinks the other way to not vaccinate the kids is the best way to keep kids safe, and not just like her kids and your kids, but society at large. That’s why it feels like such a big argument. 

So she thinks that you don’t care about keeping people safe. That is such a painful thought. Like if I just told you for sure, yeah, I went and talked to your sister-in-law and she thinks that you’re dumb and that you don’t care about keeping people safe, you’re not keeping your own children safe, and you don’t care about keeping society safe.

That is so deeply hurtful to have that thought. You can just think, my sister thinks I’m foolish, and when you think my sister thinks I’m foolish. I really wish she didn’t think that. I’m not foolish and I care so much about my kids and I care so much about society.

And so I promise you right now that from this place. Of wanting to change her mind and convince her and get her to see something that she doesn’t see. You are gonna show up poorly in that relationship. You are gonna show up defensive, antagonistic, graspy, angry, mean, you might withdraw and stonewall her and give her the cold shoulder and not talk to her. You might attack her. You might send her tons of articles.

Okay? But because you have this desperate need for her to see you the way that you see yourself, right? You are going to act in such a way that is not charitable and does not set you up for success and having a good relationship with this woman.

So now let’s put a different hat on where we just go, yeah, my sister-in-law doesn’t think we should give kids vaccines, and she thinks I’m a little foolish and that I’m hurting my kids. I don’t care about society, and we just let her think that, and you just let her be wrong about you. I want you to try that out.

I go, yeah, I feel really good about my choices. I don’t think I’m foolish. I think I’m making a good choice, and I love her so much, and I’m going to allow her to have those thoughts about me. Then how do you treat her? What’s so interesting is you probably just talk to her more and you say, how are your kids? What do you guys do this weekend? 

Now, she might be angry, she might be antagonistic again, for the same reason where she thinks that you don’t understand her and you’re judging her poorly, and so maybe she’s not acting in a great way in this relationship, but you can only control how you show up.

Let her be wrong about you. It’s okay. You can have so much peace letting her be wrong about you. My kids and I were just listening to the Saints podcast from the Mary Beggars and we were just listening to Francis DeSales and they were going out, his order at the time and preaching to the Calvinist who were so angry.

And they really thought that the Catholics were going to hell and believed things that were really, really wrong. And St. Francis DeSales just was so nice to everybody. And that was one of the things that really set him apart, is that he treated the people the Calvinists, with so much love and charity and that got their attention. And the way that he did that was he just let them be wrong about him. But he still showed up with this warmth and this charity. 

And so we wanna do that. We wanna just know that people are gonna believe things about us that aren’t true, and we wanna just let them be wrong because we can’t control what they think anyway. But we do get to control what we think and we get to control how we show up. And if you are accepting of people thinking things about you that aren’t true, and maintaining your peace and charity, that is holiness.

We wanna show up with charity for others, and we wanna have deep interior peace inside our bodies because we’re walking closely with the Lord. Because you know who you are because he knows who you are. And all you really care about is what he thinks about you, right? Let them be wrong about you and show up with charity anyway. This will transform your relationships. 

It’s okay that people have thoughts about you. You are today years old, and you know that you cannot force people to like you, you cannot force people to agree with you. But when you resist that, when you resist that someone has a different opinion or is thinking something about you that you don’t think is accurate or true, what is it? 

It just makes you mad. It just makes you mad, and then you show up in a sinful way and you’ll be held accountable for that. Isn’t that interesting? Sometimes my kids will, tell me that they think I’m not parenting the right way, especially my older two, they’re now 15 and 12 and they’ll be like, mom, you shouldn’t something, something, something. 

And I’m just like, oh, honey, I love you so much and it’s okay that you don’t see the big picture or why I’m choosing this right now. And I always say, if you, when you’re 25, if you still think. That thing that I was doing wasn’t the best call. I’ll talk to you about it later.

Because I just know that one, they don’t understand the context of having six kids and managing our lives the way that we do and why I’m choosing things. And I’ve read so many books that they haven’t read, so they don’t know some of that information.

And their prefrontal cortex hasn’t formed yet. And so definitely by 25 it will have been formed and we can talk about it. Right now, I don’t feel the need to posture or prove anything to them, and I just respond with such love and charity because I could just be like, why are you judging me? You don’t know what you’re talking about. You shouldn’t say things like that. 

And if I spoke to my girls like that, what do you think it would do to us? It would create disconnection. It would create disconnection and instead. With so much love, I just go, it’s totally fine that you think that right now.

Now with them, I’ll say, if you think this in the future, we can talk about it. I’m actually not interested in talking to them about it right now because I don’t think their child brain can understand some of the things that are going on, but I just let them be wrong about me. And then I show up with love for myself and love for them.

And this is just such a powerful concept, which can transform your relationships, letting people be wrong about you and loving them anyway, and not feeling the need to change their mind. I’m not saying that we never have discourse or conversations with people. Certainly, we can, but if you’ve tried that and it’s not working, I am asking you to let it go.

Let it go for your own soul that you don’t then create hardness of heart or bitterness or resentment. ‘Cause that will ruin your own experience of life and it will prevent you from showing up in a healthy way with this other person. 

So make a list of what you think they’re wrong about. About you again. So it’s not like, let’s pick something silly or likes somebody likes the Packers and somebody likes the Seahawks. In football, we can have differing opinions about something. 

But what really bothers us is when we have the thought that the other person thinks that we are foolish, dumb, wrong, unsafe, that they have a judgment about us. We don’t care that somebody else likes a different football team.

The thing in the relationship that feels so yucky is when we believe that they’re thinking something about us that’s wrong. That they have a negative thought about us, and that’s where we again, either withdraw from the relationship or we fight toward them. We don’t show up with peace and charity. 

And that’s the situation where I want you just to go. Can I let it go? Can I just allow this person to be wrong about me and still love them? And that’s okay. They can have thoughts about me that I don’t think are true and I still love them, and I can show up with love and charity. Okay?

All right, my friends, I am praying for you. Please pray for me and have a blessed day.