I slide into the passenger seat of my husband’s SUV and begin my routine. First, I buckle my seatbelt. Then as he turns the key in the ignition I turn the radio station to one I like better than the loud-heavy-I-need-anger-management-classes style he prefers. We both still laugh every time I do it. After being married for fifteen years we’re okay with being different.
That little scenario came up in a conversation he and I recently had about how to listen to those who are different than us. “I feel like every person is their own radio station,” I said, “When someone has a station similar to yours it’s easy to listen to them. But when it’s totally different it can be a challenge.”
We then speculated on what our radio stations would be like. We decided with grins that mine would be something awesomely cheesy like, “WholeHeart 101 FM” and his would be the counterpart, “ThinkWithYourHead 88.1 FM.” Through the years we’ve learned to “tune in” to each other (and perhaps have even created a station of our own) but that has taken a lot of time, practice and patience.
We don’t always get the luxury of spending years learning to listen well to someone else. So we need another strategy for other relationships in our lives. As he and I talked through this topic some more we came up with some ideas.
Continue reading with me at (in)courage…
