Christmas was blissfully free of large amounts of gift-giving this year, providing us with time to focus on the important activities of re-connecting with family that we frequently only see once or twice a year, and of just spending some relaxing down-time in front of classic Christmas movies while drinking hot chocolate and having fluid discussions about this and that (passionately avoiding the subject of politics wherever possible).
And, for the opportunity to do all of these things, I am thankful.
Nearly four years into the marriage, I’m just becoming well acclimated to Karen’s side of the family. I’ve had some hit-and-miss relationships with some members of the family on her side, for various reasons, and this Christmas I had some wonderful and stimulating conversations with some of them. I was very happy to have connected with them and to have experienced substantive interaction.
I couldn’t really decide why that had happened, however, until my father-in-law summarized it the best. He said that, often, we are far too interested in communicating ourselves to spend the time getting to know those to whom we are communicating. In my words, these individuals and I had always spent time talking at each other instead of to each other until this year.
For the first time in our marriage, I felt as though I truly took the time to listen to some of our family, and the result was that we found a great deal more common ground than I had ever anticipated. Part of this is that we have all progressed in our spiritual and life journeys since last we spoke, but a great deal of the reason is that we took the time to listen as well as speak for the first time.
Sure, we agree to disagree on some things. I’m very politically opposite most of Karen’s family, for example (hence the avoidance of that topic), but there’s so much more in common than not in common that I’ve discovered after taking the time to listen first and speak later.
Learning the obvious lesson from this made a wonderful Christmas gift.
Here’s to the upcoming adventures of 2011…and to hoping our flight is somewhat on time today.
Photo Copyright by Austin-Lee Barron. Used by permission.