It Takes Two to Tangle

I’m scheduled to teach a Family Catechism class at church on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Working on this presentation reminded me of my first experience with confession. I wasn’t particularly sorry for my anger at the time, but I knew it was a sin. (Being sorry is the number one requirement for forgiveness.) I was in a conflict with some family members, and I wasn’t quite ready to give up the fight. I told the priest the situation and said I understood if he couldn’t offer absolution. He absolved me of the sin of anger, and my penance was to pray for the family members involved in the situation.

Are you kidding me? Pray for these jerks? Yes.

So I did. I was a half-hearted prayer. I wasn’t convinced it would work, but it did. My anger and resentment left me as soon as I walked out the door. But the truly remarkable thing was that my family members let go of their anger, too. It was gone for all of us.

You’ve heard the old saying, “It takes two to tango.” But I would also say it takes two to tangle. A tango is a beautifully choreographed dance between two people. It takes a lot of practice to get it right.

A tangle is the opposite. It is a disharmony between two people; an argument, fight, or disagreement. Opposition. But it only becomes a tangle when both parties engage with each other. Take one person out of the equation, and you don’t have a tangle (or a tango) anymore.

Sometimes, that is how we have to handle confrontation or negative interactions with people. More often than not, these situations arise in our families. Someone gets upset about something, and then we have a conflict. But if just one person refuses to engage in the argument, you no longer argue. You have someone making a lot of noise or creating a scene all by themselves. We would call that a fit.

For many of us, withdrawing from a conflict is the first step toward forgiveness and reconciliation. Sometimes we need some space away from the situation before we can see a solution or begin to change our attitude, thoughts, and feelings. It’s tough to reconcile with people when we hold on to anger, resentment, or jealousy. Likewise, it’s hard to offer forgiveness when we feel we have to keep defending ourselves.

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God invites us to step out of the tangle first—to lay down our need to be right, to protect ourselves, or to win. That doesn’t mean pretending the hurt never happened or allowing ourselves to be mistreated. It means, with God’s help, choosing not to feed the conflict any longer.

My small act of obedience in praying for my family didn’t fix every problem overnight, but it did something more important: it changed my heart. And when my heart softened, the tension between us lost its power. The tangle loosened because one person—just one—stopped pulling on the knots.

Reconciliation is rarely dramatic or glamorous. Most of the time, it looks like quiet prayers we mumble through clenched teeth, walks we take to cool off before we respond, and honest conversations we enter into once we’ve let God touch our anger. But grace works in those hidden moments. When we let the Lord untangle our hearts, He often begins to untangle our relationships, too.

It may take two to tango and two to tangle—but it only takes one willing heart to begin making room for peace.