communication skills

The Art of Conversation Creates Art

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

It was a lovely morning yesterday. Seth and I tried a new LaVazza variety (falling off the wagon a bit on this aspect of Zero For Six-ing, but more on that later) on the balcony. We likened the rustling of the Aspen leaves to the feel of clean cotton sheets, the breezes in the pines and the birdsong to music.

The conversation went and wound its way here and there, and somewhere in there I had a fantastic idea–a doable, practical example of how to remind our government that indeed, they work for us. I won’t go into the particulars of the idea, because I want to talk about the power of conversation.

We’re meant to have it, and it’s meant to produce ideas, solutions, revelations. It’s meant to connect hearts and minds and put us in the creativity zone. So, if our conversations aren’t producing this magical marvel, especially when we’re talking with our adult children, we can examine ourselves.

Do we listen carefully and thoughtfully? Do we interrupt? Do we have to be right? Are we taking a parental role when our family members are not asking for that? Just as we’re extra polite and considerate in our conversations with non-family folks, are we also with our beloveds? Do we remember that sometimes hearts simply want to be heard–not to hear our opinion?

When we don’t know the answer do we simply say, “I don’t know, but I will pray for wisdom, and I will pray for you to have wisdom, and all will be well”?

It’s helpful to remember that those who talk the most and loudest are often drowning out the words of those with the deepest and best thoughts. Just in case you’re like me, and maybe are a bit chatty, it could be time to put some art into our conversation.

Conversation with Kids

~ Bev Parker ~ 3 Comments

My daughter Hannah was home yesterday, and she followed me around as I cleaned closets and drawers, chatting.  What fun.  What a joy to know she still likes to talk to me.

“How can I help, Mom?” she asked.  I had forgotten to eat, and knew sustenance would be good, so I requested a bit of a tea party.  We were soon sitting on the balcony, joined by Rebekah, and enjoying fruit, nuts and herbal tea.  Better still, we were enjoying conversation.

When I said I had to be gone for a minute and would be right back (putting another load of laundry on) they said, “You’d better be.”  How lovely to be wanted, popular, loved.  And what better way to achieve this exalted state than by loving listening.

This morning I was all set to return to the balcony alone for breakfast and research, but I couldn’t get away from Seth’s conversation.  I wanted to get on with my thing, but I remembered I don’t have anything on earth more important to do than to listen to my children.

“Follow me,” I told him, “and talk to me while I eat my breakfast.”  He joined me and discussed a book he’d read as a child, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy.  Marveling at what was expected and duly performed by kids back then, and discussing the differences in farming then and now, Seth was much more interesting, intriguing, and gratifying than anything I had on my precious agenda.

He left the balcony to be about his business and out popped Rebekah.  “I’ve been praying and searching for answers about my writing and my time management, Mom, (haven’t we all?) and let me show you this.”  She showed me passages from The Founder’s Bible about black American John Marrant, captive and then missionary to the Cherokees, and about his dealings with evangelist George Whitfield.  In listening closely I marveled at how God was reaching Rebekah and how she was receiving from Him.

Conversation with kids.  There’s very little kinder or more worthwhile that we can do with our time.  I’ll never forget the day I was, as usual, regaling my dad with every detail of my day at school.  “And then I go, and then she went, and then I went, and she goes . . . blah, blah, blah.”  Nothing like the beautiful thoughts of my children this morning.  And yet, my dad listened as though completely enthralled.

My older brother, who was waiting to go hunting with my dad, stood holding his deer rifle and tapping his foot.  Finally he could take it no longer.  “Did it ever occur to you,” he asked, “that Dad has anything better to do with his time than listen to you yak?”

I was horrified and embarrassed and suddenly acutely aware of the banality of my conversation.  But before I could answer, Dad answered for me.  “I don’t have a thing in the world more important to do than listen to Bev.”

Wow.  No wonder I pray lots.  No wonder I have every confidence God hears me.  No wonder I have done this great and good thing for my own children.  I converse with them, not at them.  I listen to them.

And they talk to me.  Glory Hallelujah!

happy-stick-girl

P.S.  The Proverbs 31 Woman “watches over the ways of her household.”  How better to watch over the ways of our households, to know what’s really happening in the precious hearts with which we’re entrusted, than to converse, to listen.

Would you just be still?

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

The question:  Is it perseverance or pig-headedness, initiative or insanity?

The answer:  It depends on whose behavior I’m trying to change, whose revelation I’m trying to get.

yellow birds

The tried but not true way of living is to beat my head against a brick wall, yet again.  Maybe if I phrase it just right, wait for just the right opening, pick my timing – maybe this time that thick-headed soul will see the light!

But this morning I decided I just really didn’t want the resultant inevitable headache of the brick wall encounter.  And so . . . believe it or not . . . I kept still and silent.  When John finally asked me, “What are you thinking?” I didn’t jump at his throat like a hungry piranha.

piranha

How did this miracle occur?  Because I waited and prayed and thought of what truths I knew, beginning with:  Is this love or is this fear?  I know enough to know that when I’m fretting, frustrated, or consumed with some unpleasant thought pattern, I am in fear.

And so, as I thought of what revelations I wanted John to get, I was reminded that I need not fear, that even if John NEVER sees it my way, God is certainly big enough to get around that.  And so, when he asked me what I was thinking, I said, “I’m thinking that even when we make a mistake, it’s not a mistake.”

And then I went to be alone and pray.  I asked God for a specific word, and I opened my Bible up to Jonah.  I got lots out of that story that I never saw before, and I finished with God telling Jonah, in brief, “Don’t you think I know a few things you don’t know, don’t you know you can be wrong even when you’re absolutely sure your way is the only way?”

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

In short, “Be still and know that I am God.”

I took that literally.  Sit still.  Don’t move.  Don’t be frustrated with the lie-abouts in your house.  Rather be glad they’re all still abed so you can have time and peace.  Stop trying to change others so God can change you.  So you can be still.  And know.  He is God.

woman sitting in grass