I should summarize my thought process on attributes before going further. Strength = applied force. Dexterity = applied movement. Constitution = applied endurance. Intelligence = applied analysis of information. Wisdom = applied judgement of perspective. Charisma = applied personal influence. Also, the relationship of skills to attributes is such that you only ever roll/reference an attribute directly if you do not have training in a given skill.
Back to combat. Roll to damage, roll to resist.
In the current system, Lift is used to determine Strength damage, which is added to most melee weapons to determine the final damage code. I really want to subsume all of those kinds of feats of strength under a single skill – Athletics – which would be used not only to determine Strength damage but also for generic activities based on applied strength but not necessarily related to movement, which is the purview of Dexterity and Acrobatics.
In the same way, resistance is determined based on the Constitution-Stamina skill, which I think is just fine.