This week I followed the steps. A conflict between students needed to be addressed, so I did what Jesus said to do. I didn't ignore it, and I didn't blow it up into something public and humiliating. I brought together everyone involved — six or seven students, the one who'd been hurt, their parents, plus a parent who wasn't directly involved — witnesses, the way Matthew 18 describes — and laid it out as plainly and fairly as I knew how. By the end of the call, everyone agreed to start fresh.
And I still don't feel settled.
I kept waiting to feel like I'd done the right thing and have it feel right too. Instead, I did the right thing, and it still felt like standing in wet sand. Here is what I've had to relearn this week: Matthew 18 was never a promise that people will feel better, or that the outcome will be clean. It's an instruction for how to be faithful, not a guarantee of how the story ends — or how I'll feel once it does. Jesus lays out the steps and never once says, "and then you'll feel at peace." He gives us the process anyway, because the process is about our obedience, not our comfort.
That distinction matters more than I want it to. I wanted the process to be a tool that would settle my soul along with the situation. It isn't. It's a discipline that keeps me honest — that keeps me from ignoring what's wrong to avoid discomfort, and from handling it in a way that humiliates instead of restores. Whether it worked, whether the agreement holds, whether I ever feel at peace about it — none of that was ever mine to control. It was only ever mine to try, faithfully, one step at a time.
I think of the father in Mark 9, crying out, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." That's where I am this week. I believe Matthew 18 is right. I believe going to witnesses instead of gossiping or exploding was the right move. And I still don't feel settled. Both of those are true at once, and I'm learning — again — that faith isn't the absence of that tension. It's staying in it honestly, instead of demanding a feeling as proof that I obeyed correctly.
And that's okay. I don't need to feel settled to know I was faithful. I don't need certainty about the outcome to trust the One who's holding it. God has us — the students, the parents, and me, unsettled soul and all. He doesn't need my peace of mind to be at work in this. My job is obedience. The ending isn't mine to write.
Maybe that's the real lesson of Matthew 18 for weeks like this one — not that obedience guarantees peace, but that obedience is still worth it even when peace doesn't come right away. I did the right thing. I don't get to control what happens after that. I only get to keep believing and keep bringing my unbelief to the One who can hold both.
"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone." — Matthew 18:15