Keep grace and truth integrated and woven together in your talk. As much as possible, avoid the tendency to have a “grace” part and then a “truth” part of the talk; otherwise, it could seem like two different, and even inconsistent, talks. When you are confronting, sprinkle in your care. When you are caring, sprinkle in the truth. For example, you might say, “While I want us to be close again, this problem is getting in the way, and I need to resolve it between us. I can’t dance around it or ignore it. But it’s hard, because I don’t want this talk to distance us even more.”
