Two sentences are all it took to show me how to communicate effectively.
Last month I sat in the kitchen of my daughter’s home as she and my son-in-law had a brief conversation about how an unruly child had been dealt with.
“How did I do in there?” one of them asked.
The other one paused for a moment. “I think you may have been a little short.” And a truth was conveyed in love, just as it had been sought in love.
Neither the question nor the answer was spoken defensively, derisively or with a desire to criticize or justify actions. There was no apprehension, no condemnation, no desire to be right or be smarter than the other. No recriminations were voiced, no threats made.
In fact there was no ongoing conversation at all. The question had been asked out of love, the answer had been given out of love. And it was time to move on. For one, the time to learn. For the other, the opportunity to offer support in that process.
If all husbands and wives communicated with each other this way, we wouldn’t have the epidemic of divorce that’s now “normal” in American society. We wouldn’t have shouting matches, dish-throwing, slamming of doors and domestic violence complaints.
We would have peace in our homes. We would create the climate in which peace reigns. By their example, parents would teach children how to get along with siblings, classmates and other kids in the neighborhood.
But we want to be right, even if it kills someone else’s spirit. We want to exercise power and/or erode another’s self-worth. We want to control. We want to make things right on our own and deny responsibility when the actions we take on our own blow up in our faces.
We don’t want to be like my daughter and her husband, in other words.
Where do those two people get the calm that empowers them to ask a simple question, get a simple answer, learn and move on? They get it by consciously relying on God to provide them with that ability.
God’s door is always open to us. But we aren’t always open to God.
