Thursday, August 10, 2006

thank you for hearing me

My husband is a smart man (using my best Forrest Gump voice here). He doesn’t say much, but when he does, you won’t forget it.

Alan is also a great listener, even though he doesn’t look like he is listening. I need eye contact and an occasional grunt of acknowledgement. But he can read the paper, watch TV, and brush his teeth (with the loud electric toothbrush) all at the same time and still repeat everything I’ve said, even though it doesn’t look like he is listening.

Alan is not a big talker in the car. Lots of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers. I have found that I have a captive audience in the car and it is the best opportunity for me to talk to Alan about “stuff”, because where is he going to go?

We talk about church a lot in the car. Not just our church…THE Church (capital C). On a recent four hour trip, I was on my soapbox about how some Christians can get so caught up in biblical “knowledge” that they become too focused on the knowing and not the doing. And that same attitude can be used as a tool by Satan for people to become boastful and self-righteous. Blah, blah, blah. Yada, yada, yada. No comment from my honey for about ten miles.

Then he said it. The one sentence that summed up all my ranting:

People don’t care about how much you know. They want to know how much you care.

So what took me ten miles to say, he said in a fraction of a mile. And he actually shut me up because I was speechless. I told you he was a smart man!

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