listening

"Stuff About Family" Series


Growing up in the buckle of the "Bible Belt" among so many aunts, uncles, and cousins who were very vocal about faith in God and the old norms and traditions of the south, it was hard to imagine there was any other perspective in the world. "Yes Ma'am" and "No Sir" marked the outward respect we were made to show any elder or anyone of authority. Faith, we were taught, was demonstrated by faithful attendance in church, which was always done with a southern evangelistic pomp-always your best behavior as well as your most distinguished and polished look. I had an entire wardrobe for church, alone. And speaking to any elder or authority figure carried the responsibility of never saying exactly what you felt or thought, but rather, learning how to beat eloquently around the bush until, possibly, some vague apparition of the message in your heart was communicated. It was like you were never supposed to really, really know what others thought or felt; and it was rude to suppose someone might care what you really thought.

This was quite possibly the hardest thing for me to get my arms around, because, like most everything else growing up, there was a double standard. Learning how to relate with others in those formative years, this double standard wreaked a little havoc. At 37 years old, I'm just beginning to understand how it works, and why. But growing up it seemed everyone, even my peers, had a grasp on this "norm of the South." I had no understanding of it. I was the person who said the right thing at the wrong time, and still am, to some degree. This idea of being prudish in expressing one's self was not something that was taught outright like math or english, but something that had to be "caught." So, it seemed to me that everyone else rolled smoothly along in life because they had cracked the communication code. I rolled along with a few flat places on my wheels. I was always sticking my foot in my mouth; saying exactly what I thought, or worse, saying what someone else said they thought!

Just because a person is a family member, even, perhaps, a parent, it does not mean they know you. What it takes to get to know someone most people are unwilling to do, family members not excluded. The people who know us best are the ones who listen with their heads and their hearts, and keep on doing it. Like those huge satellite dishes turned ever skyward, scanning the immensity of space continually, people who really connect with others listen with indomitable intensity. Tirelessly scanning faces, body language, and processing words in sequence with it all, they can hear the words that are hidden inside our deepest parts, the truest words. Excercising what patience really is, they nod understandingly with accepting arms reaching out to the odd and socially clumsy. They listen to the words, they sense the mood, they serve and earn that sacred trust, they don't try to set it all straight. They rarely speak their mind, only words of affirmation and agape. They pick up where you last left off and everything is as it was before. No jarring verbal jabs, no spear throwing. They are open to you. They expect nothing, but cherish what they recieve from you. They listen to your words, and over time they can hear your heart.

In the very beginning, this is the kind of relationship enjoyed between the eternal infinite Father and his finite son, the first human man, Adam. This, the first interaction ever recorded between God and man, happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam heard God's direction about subduing the earth. God listened to Adam's ideas, questions, and musings. Perhaps it was during one of these walks and talks that God saw Adam's need of a better suited companion. This is the first example God set for those caring for others smaller and weaker. He listened to Adam. Even though there was failure in Adam's part of the relationship, we can see that God must have enjoyed His role in Adam's life.

Why would God, the All-Powerful need or want to have this kind of interaction with His creation, made a little lower than the angels? The only two possible answers can be one or both: 1. God enjoyed listening and talking in the Garden. 2. God knew Adam's need of it.

We all need someone to genuinely hear our musings, our 'understandings' or misunderstandings of our surroundings, to hear the questions our hearts ask. God was not only that person for Adam before sin, but even after the rift in man's relationship with God, God still listened to the cry of the hearts of men. The theme of the whole Bible is God wanting relationship with men. God has desired to be that person for every living soul, and He has gone to the greatest lengths to get His message of love and redemption across to sin-cursed mankind.

So, when God told His chosen people to talk about Him to their children when they get up and when they lay down, when they go out and come in, when they walk along the way and sit down to eat, there is an inference that they already knew they were to have such a relationship with their children, because He had such a relationship with His! There was a closeness in family units. That was how He planned them to be. It was so, that the children would not be kept in the dark and have to fight their way through what their parents did not say at all or said wrongly. God means for family to listen to those smaller, weaker members. He means it for the children because they need instruction and influence toward Righteousness. He means it for parents because they need it, and He knows the joy it will bring them.

We all need to learn to be listeners of hearts. This means being open to hear even things that may be jarring. This means carefully learning to scan faces and process their words. This means petitioning God for that Divine patience. This means listening and walking with someone a good while before attempting to speak words into their soul. This means gaining trust and speaking lovingly the bare naked truth as the other can handle it. The truth.