My daughter was highlighting my hair (yes, from a box. Yes, to cover the gray that’s laying siege to my scalp) when she told me about a friend who’s not sure if she identifies herself as a Christian anymore.
As when I hear about anyone who’s deconstructing faith, my chest tightened at the sternum. It’s painful for the person, and it’s painful for those who love them.
A few nights ago, I got a call from my son from his military base. Wanna know what was great?
He called me because he had a bad day.
In a couple of weeks, my youngest turns 13. Which means I will soon be parenting four teenagers. Which means my prayer life is thriving.
As some parents of tweens chatted with my husband and me last week, I recalled some of the best advice given to us for parenting teens: Keep them talking. Keep the relational bridge open.
It’s great advice for all of parenting, right? But at times with each of my kids, that’s required supreme effort.
This week on a phone conversation with a friend, she asked what’s become our custom at the end of our calls: What’s one intimate prayer request I can pray for?
It was probably telling that I didn’t really know.
When I first arrived back after living in Africa, it surprised me. I discovered it over lattes, or in the church foyer, or checking out at the grocery store.
I realized a lot of people were hungry, starved even, to be listened to. To have someone look them in the eye, even for a few seconds, and be with them. Undistracted. Agenda-free. Curious. Empathetic.
A couple of weeks ago one of my teenagers was super-miffed with my husband and me.
On a car ride home from church, after explaining a biblical position we held on a touchy subject, this unnamed teenager maintained his shock and sudden anger.
Genevieve’s voice poured through the phone to me. She’s a former pastor’s wife still wading through court proceedings following a horrific, jarring divorce. That’s not to mention the affair, the pregnant mistress, the mental disorders and gaslighting. Her descriptions called to mind a life upturned, shaken violently, spilled. How do you help a friend grieving after divorce?
Some pieces of her former life had temporarily skittered beyond vision: Her ally in the world’s onslaught. Financial security. A co-parent and advocate for their boys. Her helper to pick up the kids or fix the washing machine. A calm presence after a nightmare. Someone to process the day with. A lover of her body.
This week, I’m working through the final interior design and whatnot on my own parenting book (due out this October: Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts. #shamelessplug). And there are moments in real-life parenting when I’m whispering to myself, “Maybe we should retitle this thing I’ve Got Nothin’.”
But those moments give me all the more reason to get excited about other parenting books genuinely trying to step in with practical ideas to help us connect and shape and love well. So I’m tickled pink to be offering two copies of Becky Harling’s How to Listen So Your Kids Will Talk (Bethany, 2021).
Before my husband’s last (pre-COVID) international trip, I realized one of the things I miss most about him.
As he was packing–so methodical, everything in precisely-sized containers, shirts carefully folded over a packing template–I told him quietly, “See, you humanize me.”
Reading Time: 4 minutes
“I just don’t understand how…”
I heard it again this week from someone else. This is after hearing it more times than I could count with someone else’s conflict.
Sure, there are times when this phrase fits in an argument. I could’ve used it, say, when my son this morning initially refused to clean off the stovetop because he only put the grease there, not the crumbs.
This was after I had been cleaning up others’ messes for about an hour while he slept before school.
I may have flipped my lid…?
This is an occasion where I could see myself saying (or may have indirectly said?), I DO NOT UNDERSTAND how you do not see yourself responsible for being your brother’s/sister’s/I-don’t-care-who’s keeper to clean up their few crumbs, yet see me as responsible for yours.
But I digress.
I’ve recently heard “I just don’t understand” in contexts like this:
I just don’t understand why this person doesn’t want my feedback.
Man, I don’t understand how someone can’t just be responsible for themselves.
I just don’t understand how all those idiots can vote for [name].
Really?! I don’t understand how someone can be a true Christian/American/thoughtful human and support [whatever].
So if you will allow my two cents: In general, “I just don’t understand” doesn’t feel like a waving banner of emotional maturity. For us. For our kids.
And it is killing us–as a nation, and even as a Church.
Allow me one Scriptural defense. In Philippians 2, catch the source of our compassion for others: It’s Jesus’ compassion and understanding of us.
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,
complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
What if Jesus had just been like, I just don’t understand how you could [insert disgusting or just reprehensible weakness].
It’s our intimate, I’ve-lived-this knowledge of Jesus’ own sympathy with us that helps us walk a mile in someone else’s Chuck Taylors. We’ve felt this God-man who is “not…unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Hebrews 4:15).
(Not to be confused with the Jack Handy quote: “Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you’ll be a mile from them, and you’ll have their shoes.” Forgive me, people. It’s Friday.)
Jesus gets us. He climbed into our skin.
My husband pointed out to me once that if we can’t see how someone else CANNOT SEE something (hello, the underwear lying next to the hamper? The toilet paper sitting on top of the holder?), it could be a sign it’s a God-given area of strength for us.
If you can’t figure out how a person in poverty can’t show up for a job–maybe it’s a sign you haven’t had parents who struggled to remain employed. That you’ve never known illiteracy or life without private transportation or mental illness or the vise of addiction.
I confess that for a few years in Africa, I had thoughts like this. (Spoiler: Still have them.)
When I saw the grocery-store stocker snoozing, perched on a crate in the aisle, I thought: lazy.
But what if, along with the maybe-or-maybe-not paycheck, I was the one turning over on the ground at night in a noisy, dangerous neighborhood? What if I served 12 hours as a night guard as my second job while attending classes during the morning for a better shot at providing for my kids?
Could that person actually be hardworking, and caught in a moment of exhaustion? (Picture me dozing in church during my first trimester.)
See, my swift judgment—maybe sweetly called “discernment” or righteous indignation—has prevented me at times from witnessing God’s beauty and glory in others.
I’m talking the breadth of his image as expressed in a robust, diverse Church, drinking in his wide mercy right along with me. A beauty different from God’s Western, female, middle-class, Caucasian image in me.
Now, when I catch “I just don’t understand” about to fly out of my mouth–I think, Shoot. Haven’t even tried. Or at least not hard enough.
Maybe I could think, Jesus, thanks for “getting” me. No matter what. And, How can I raise kids who “get” everybody else?
How can I listen to you better?
And in a season where so often I hear “I just can’t understand” the people who watch Fox or CNN, or vote red or blue, or protest or don’t:
If we can’t understand?
For goodness’ sake. Let’s try.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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