Thursday, October 9, 2008
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I always enjoyed walking the beautiful three-mile walk around the local lake we used to live near. And my wife enjoyed it too. Walking together is good. It not only improves your physical condition, but it gives you a chance to talk. Well, theoretically. The problem is I'm into covering that ground as fast as possible. That's maximum aerobic effect, calorie burn. You know. But when my wife and I would chug up and down our local hills at my hyper pace, she had a question: "Weren't we going to talk?" "Sure." Then comes her all too legitimate complaint: "You're walking too fast to talk." It's not just about when we're on a hike. And I don't think I'm alone.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Walking too Fast to Talk."
Our word for today from the Word of God - now, let me warn you, I call it elbow verses. When you read them in church, husbands and wives start elbowing each other. "Hey, this is for you!" The wives get it in the earlier verses that talk about wives submitting to their husbands. But Mr. Husband is the focus of our word for today from Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church."
No doubt about what the word husband means to God. It's selfless love that continually puts a wife's needs and a wife's welfare ahead of his own. It's sacrificial love, like Jesus' love - love that's expressed by caring for her in a thousand little and big ways. A woman needs to be loved, she need to be valued, and what's the biggest single way she can tell she's loved and valued? By knowing she is important enough to be heard by her man. A woman has no greater need, I think, than to know she's being heard by the man to whom she has entrusted her life.
Which means she needs time. Guess what a man has the hardest time giving? Time! Especially time to listen. Why? Because he's walking or running too fast to talk or listen. If she can catch me, she can talk to me. If she can keep it to a three-minute summary, she can have my attention. That's not love.
If you're a married man or a man otherwise in love, the woman you love needs regular time to be heard. When a woman feels unheard, she talks louder, longer and more often. If you're wondering why she's becoming a nag, maybe you should look in the mirror.
Your listening time with your wife has to be a deliberate choice, a sacrifice choice, a regular choice. "I'm all yours, honey, and I'm yours for a while." That kind of love will create a home where there are no unpleasant surprises; where frustrations don't build into unmanageable avalanches; where a woman has that harbor that her heart has always longed for.
But it won't happen if you just keep going at the same speed you've been going. As my wife has taught me on our little walks, you have to slow down in order to talk. You have to slow down in order to listen. You know what? My wife's language of love, and I think every woman's language of love is pretty bottom line. It's your willingness to listen.