In the first years of marriage, my wife and I had a recurring conversation. We\u2019d each come home after a long day\u2019s work. She\u2019d ask me how my day was, and I\u2019d say \u201cGreat.\u201d Being a thoughtful young husband, I\u2019d ask her how her day was, and she\u2019d launch into a detailed narrative. I would happily listen and when the narrative paused, offer my suggestions and solutions to the problems she\u2019d described. Sometimes her response was appreciative, often it was slightly irritated, but usually she was frustrated to the point of tears because I \u201cwasn\u2019t listening.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took a while, but I finally learned that she wasn\u2019t sharing her day with me so that I could solve her problems or offer advice. She was more than capable of dealing with the office politics and technicalities of her job. She was rehearsing the day with me so that I could understand what she\u2019d experienced and be with her in the feelings those experiences had provoked. Having been apart all day, she was inviting me back into her life. In quickly offering solutions and advice, I was effectively ignoring her and focusing on her job. No wonder she was frustrated with me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Listening well and loving deeply won\u2019t resolve every political disagreement in your church. It will do something better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[327,1376],"class_list":["post-24754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-life-together","tag-politics","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24756,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24754\/revisions\/24756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}