You know the contact is still in your phone. You scroll past the name and feel the small drop in your chest, and then you keep scrolling. It has been months. Maybe years. Whatever happened, the friendship or the family tie that used to be easy is now a closed door, and reaching for the handle feels like more than you can carry today.
Here is the honest answer. Rupture in relationships is normal. The skill almost none of us were taught is repair. Kristel Acevedo, a discipleship pastor, says you do not start with the hardest reconciliation. You start by looking up and remembering a God who crossed every distance to reach you. Then you take a small, humble step: repair a minor conflict first, watch what God does with it, and let that build the courage for the harder ones.
Why Is Repairing Relationships So Hard Now?
Because we have a thousand voices teaching us how to leave and almost none teaching us how to return. Lisa Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project, who hosts the conversation, names the backdrop plainly. We are living through a loneliness epidemic. The culture is fluent in protecting your peace, cutting people off and curating who gets access to you. It is nearly silent on the work of coming back together after something breaks.
Acevedo feels the gap so sharply she practically begs for someone to fill it.
“I need someone to write that book on repairing relationships, ’cause I’d read that.”
— Kristel Acevedo
That is the whole problem in one sentence. We are not short on conviction that relationships matter. We are short on a practice for fixing them.
Here is the objection worth saying out loud: maybe some relationships are not worth repairing. That is true, and we will get to it. But notice how fast that thought arrives, and how rarely the other one does. Most of us reach for the exit long before we have honestly tried the door. The loneliness keeps spreading not because rupture is rare, but because repair is a skill we let go extinct.
What Is the First Step in Fixing a Broken Relationship?
Look up before you look across. Acevedo says the move that makes repair possible is not a technique for the awkward conversation. It is a memory. Before you rehearse what you will say, remember what God already did for you.
She points to Philippians 2. Jesus does not stay at a safe distance. He humbles himself, takes on a body, grows up, gets his feet dirty in the same world that will kill him, and goes all the way to the cross. The God of the universe crossed an unthinkable gap to repair his relationship with people who had walked away. Hold your grudge up next to that, and it starts to look different.
“When we really pause to consider how much God has forgiven us, who are we to withhold that from anyone else?”
— Kristel Acevedo
This is where Yana Conner, who has taught on forgiveness for the Jude 3 Project, adds the interior piece. Forgiveness is not pretending the debt was not real. It is handing the debt to someone bigger than you.
“Forgiveness is releasing someone of their debt, but it’s also entrusting their debt to the Lord.”
— Yana Conner
Conner is blunt about what happens when you skip that step. The resentment does not punish the other person. It locks you in.
“Unforgiveness is a prison. You give them the key to the rest of your life.”
— Yana Conner
So the first step is not the phone call. The first step is letting God settle the account inside you, so that when you do reach out, you are not reaching from a place of leverage. You are reaching from a place of release.
Do I Have to Reconcile With Someone Who Hurt Me?
No. And this is where the counsel has to get careful, because if you blur this line you can do real damage. Acevedo draws it clearly. Repair is not a command to walk back into harm.
“There’s nothing wrong with having boundaries in your life with people who are toxic or who are intentionally trying to harm you.”
— Kristel Acevedo
The team behind the Jude 3 Project’s Humble Hermeneutic sharpens why this matters by separating two words we tend to fuse. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same act.
“Forgiveness is always possible. Reconciliation, not so much. And so forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things. We could always forgive people. But reconciliation, that may not be possible, ’cause that requires two people.”
— Janna Connor
Read that again, because it carries the weight of the whole piece. Forgiveness is something you can do alone, in your own heart, before God. Reconciliation takes two people willing to do the work, and you cannot force the other person to show up. Dr. Cynthia James says it even more directly.
“Because there’s forgiveness doesn’t mean you’re entitled to restoration.”
— Dr. Cynthia James
So when this article talks about repair, it is talking about ordinary rupture: the friend you fell out with over something that, in hindsight, was small; the family member you stopped calling and cannot quite remember why; the brother or sister in church you let drift. It is not talking about abuse. With someone who is actively working to harm you, the boundary is the faithful move, not the failure.
How Do I Find the Courage to Repair a Relationship That Feels Impossible?
Start small on purpose. Acevedo says not to open with the reconciliation that scares you most. Repair a minor disagreement with a friend first, and pay attention to what God does in it.
— Kristel Acevedo
Fields compares it to the wax-on, wax-off training in The Karate Kid. The small, boring reps are not a detour from the real fight. They are how you build the muscle the real fight will demand. You make the slightly awkward apology to a coworker. You text the friend you snapped at. Each small repair teaches your body that reaching out does not kill you, and that God meets you in the reaching. Then, one day, you have enough faith to call the parent you have not spoken to in ten years.
The obvious objection: What if I start small, do the work, and the other person still will not budge? That is a real risk, and it is where Jerome Gay, who has taught on church hurt for the Jude 3 Project, keeps repair honest. He will not let reconciliation become a word we use to skip the hard part.
“Reconciliation is impossible without confrontation.”
— Jerome Gay
Repair is not pretending. It is not a smooth, conflict-free reset where everyone agrees not to mention what happened. Real repair usually means naming the thing, and naming it carries risk. The other person may not meet you there. If they do not, you have still done your part, and you have still grown. Forgiveness was always within your power. Reconciliation was never fully in your hands.
Why Does the Same Conflict Keep Showing Up in My Relationships?
Because the person across from you is often holding up a mirror. Fields offers a humbling observation: what frustrates us most in other people is frequently something we do ourselves. The offense stings precisely because it reflects back something we have not made peace with in our own lives.
Name that, and a lot of heat leaves the room. Think of the friend who is always late, the relative who never listens, the coworker who makes everything about themselves. Sit with it long enough, and you may find your own fingerprints on the same habit. That is not a reason to excuse anyone. It is a reason to come to the repair without the armor of being the only one in the right. Humility is what opens the door that being right keeps shut.
Quick Answers
Why is repair so hard? Acevedo and Fields point to a culture that trains us to protect our peace and cut people off, with almost no practice in coming back together after a rupture.
What is the first step? Look up before you look across. Remember how much God has forgiven you, then let that free you to release the debt and reach out.
Do I have to reconcile with someone who abused me? No. Acevedo affirms healthy boundaries with toxic or abusive people. As the Humble Hermeneutic team puts it, forgiveness is always possible, but reconciliation takes two and is not always wise or safe.
How do I build courage for a big repair? Start small. Repair a minor conflict, watch God’s faithfulness in it, and let that grow your faith for the harder ones.
Is forgiveness the same as reconciliation? No. Forgiveness you can do alone before God. Reconciliation requires the other person and a real conversation, including, as Jerome Gay says, the confrontation most of us would rather skip.
You scrolled past the name again this morning. You do not have to make the hardest call today. But you could make a small one. Repair something little, and let God show you he is in it. The world is content to leave things broken. You were made for the other work.
This piece draws on discipleship pastor Kristel Acevedo’s conversation with Lisa Fields on the Jude 3 Project, “Is God Silent? What to Do When Life Is Falling Apart.” Listen to the full episode to hear her work through it in her own words.