The Smallest (Biggest) Gift

“Do small things with great love.” ~Mother Teresa

Have you heard the saying, “Men are like waffles, and women are like spaghetti”?  It refers to the psyche… the waffle-brain being organized, compartmentalized, and the spaghetti-brain with more flow, where everything is connected.  It’s a popular saying… but I’m not buying it.

You see, my husband and I don’t fit the mold.  We’re two passionate people from two different cultures, and both our brains would probably look like waffle cones filled with spaghetti, if properly dissected.  We both bring a lot of opinions to the table, sometimes without the all-important side of understanding.

But there is a gift.  A small, small gift.  A special gift that can bring peace to the waffle and to the spaghetti.  It takes very little effort and next to no skill.  It doesn’t require a higher education or a technical degree.  This gift doesn’t even ask that you spend money to buy it, or that you wander through the house to find it.

So why is it such a hard gift to give?  What fears stop me from offering it more often?

Maybe it’s because I’m afraid that if I give this small, special gift… I won’t have the answers.

Or maybe I think I won’t even understand.

Maybe we just don’t have the patience at the end of the day to give this small, quiet gift.

Maybe it’s too exhausting to offer up a part of you that you’ll never be able to get back… your undivided attention, your time, your unconditionally offered self.

Or worse… maybe I’m afraid that if I give this gift, I might end up in an argument.  That I’ll get my feelings hurt, or hear something I don’t want to hear, or we’ll miscommunicate, and the conversation will turn painful.

Whatever the reason… the Gift of Listening is simple enough in theory, but not always easy to offer to the ones who mean the most.

And so my husband and I invented the Five-Minute Gift.  To break it down.  To make it easier to give.   To simplify it.

It happened one evening during a not-so-simple conversation.  Not an argument… just the kind that comes with lots of talking on both sides.  To this conversation I had worn a face that said, “I’m listening,” but my mind was problem-solving.  You see, men aren’t the only ones who can be “fixers.”  We women can be quick to problem-solve, too, can’t we… especially when we think we’ve got the right solution.  But that night I couldn’t think of the right solution.  I hated that I didn’t know the right thing to say… I hated that I couldn’t fix it.  I saw the worry on his face and wished I knew the right way to encourage him, the right way to help.

And then I realized something.  I’m not a trained counselor, and I don’t always know what to say.  Even if I were, that wouldn’t be what he needed from me.  But there is one thing I can do.  As I contemplated offering this one thing, this Small Gift, the preschool song came back to me, the one I’ve sung with my little ones at the library, the one that says, “I have two ears to hear with.”  And it dawned on this stubborn wife that God placed those ears strategically on opposite sides of my head, in just the right location, that I may hear the one I’m facing.

And so I threw my worries and fears out the window along with my plans for the evening and decided to offer him what I could.  I shifted on the couch so I could face him, and held up a hand though we were both mid-confusing-jumbled sentences.

“I’m going to give you a gift,” I told him.  “Five minutes.  Just talk.  I’m not going to judge whether it’s right or wrong, or take anything personally, or problem-solve.  I’m just going to listen.  Tell me everything that’s bothering you.  Everything that’s on your mind.”  I knew a lot of it I wouldn’t understand.  Some of it might even be about me.  But I promised.

This first evening that the Five-Minute Gift was born, he looked stunned.  “Are you sure?” he asked.  And I realized, ashamed, how little time I’ve spent just listening.

So I promised to offer the gift.  No judgment, no fixing.

He seemed reluctant, but took a deep breath and began.

He told me what was on his mind.  He told me what was bothering him.  Some of it was about me.  I was tempted to take it personally but remembered my promise and decided to stay the Listening Friend instead of morphing into Hurt Wife.  Some of what was bothering him wasn’t about me.  It was external stuff that I didn’t really understand, couldn’t relate to.  But I sat there.  And I listened.

You see… just like men aren’t the only ones who tend to be fixers sometimes… we women aren’t the only ones who once in a while just want to be heard.  Our men want and deserve to be heard too.  And if your husband is a verbal processor like mine is… then sometimes he really needs you to just listen.

And as I listened, I stopped watching the clock and started watching his face.  He started to look more at peace.  Being heard can do that for a person.  Knowing that your spouse is there for you… really there, unconditionally there, without agenda or solutions or calendar… can be a deeply restorative thing.  Offering Presence without a Project in mind can create a feeling of safety in marriage… even a marriage of two opinionated minds.

You see, my husband has told me this before: “If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”  His words remind me of these: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15).  What a gift to give… the gift of caring even if we don’t fully understand.  The gift of trying on another’s shoes.  One way to wrap up that gift, the gift of Empathy, is in Listening.

Now when one of us seems to be carrying an invisible weight, we’ll sit each other down at our little kitchen table and say, “Five minutes.  Just talk.”  The “five-minute” description isn’t a way to put a limit on it, or to cause us to take turns; it’s just a way to press pause on the day and initiate listening.

And the minutes pass by, and we connect in a different way, in a friend-way.  Maybe our stresses don’t float away like so many bubbles, but at least we’re not alone in them.  And we know that even if we don’t have the answers, we’re still offering up something special.  Because when we find our listening ears, and we find our loyal hearts, we find a bit of patience, and offer it to each other?  That’s a simple gift with a big impact.

Using our Ears and Our Hearts Together,

Laura Jane

*Can you think of a time when someone just listened to you?  When a loved one was just present for you?  What kind of a difference did that make?