Day 110 - Merely a mirror
Scripture focus: My people are broken - shattered! - and they put on band-aids, saying, "It's not so bad. You'll be just fine." But things are not "just fine"! Jeremiah 6:14 The Message
Why do we minimize our brokenness? Years ago, I had a friend who complained - all the time - about everything. She was miserable, and made all of her friends miserable. I eventually began experimenting with different responses, in the hope of finding something to break the cycle. Nothing worked. Until one day, at our weekly girl's breakfast out - it so happened we were the only two girls to show up. And she started right in with the litany. "My husband is an idiot." And she listed several examples, all of which proved her point. (By the way, they all applied to my husband too, but I didn't think he was an idiot! I decided not to mention this - I had tried this tactic unsuccessfully in the past.)
I tried a new thing - reflective listening; basically, repeating back to her what I heard her say."You know, I used to think your husband was just the usual kind of husband, doing things in ways that we wives couldn't possibly understand. But after all these stories, I realize that what I hear you saying is that your husband is a total loser. I don't know what you're going to do! This is terrible!" (I tried to reflect back both facts and feelings.)
Silence. "Well, yeah, but he's a great father."
"I remember last week when he forgot and left the twins in the tub for an hour while he got distracted playing a video game? You swore they were going to be permanently puckered! I recall how you made the decision right then and there that he'd never again be allowed to bathe those children unsupervised." More silence. So I continue. "And don't forget about back to school night! He volunteered to be a room mother when he got a look at the kid's cute teacher! You blew a gasket over that one! Don't you recall how you decided he didn't love you, or the children, and he never ever did a single thing without some motive of personal gain? And, you promised you'd never take him to another school function again!"
Deafening silence. "Well, at least he provides for us."
"Yeah, but he doesn't let you spend any of it. Wasn't it just last week that you wanted to replace that sofa you bought last year with a new one? And he told you that the one you had was just fine? Wasn't that the time you called him a penny pincher and a man with absolutely no regard for his home?"
"Gosh. I don't know where you're getting this stuff from. I love my husband. He's fine. You make it sound like we have problems!" Pretty much after that, she never complained about him again. After a few years, she moved away and we lost touch. I'll never know if things really were fine, and she needed to curb her enthusiasm for criticism, or if there was more to the story. It's hard work, this process of learning how to live and love each other well. I wonder about which was more truthful - the constant complaining, or the sudden silence. It seemed to me, that when my friend realized that I was actually listening to her lists, and I heard her saying that something was broken, all of a sudden, she didn't want to think about things being broken - she wanted everything to be "fine." Sometimes brokenness impedes our progress to the point where we end up frozen by the paralysis of analysis. Other times our unwillingness to acknowledge our need for transformation leaves us stubbornly resistant to rescue. To be continued.
Recommended reading: Joshua 18 and 19 in the morning; Psalm 88 in the evening
No comments:
Post a Comment