What I want for you and what you want for you

Years ago my wife and I went to a communication class at church. Wisdom would suggest taking the class proactively, yet desperation requires taking steps at any time.  We were desperate.  I was desperate.

We had just had twins and our communication had devolved into a series of grunts. One grunt meant ‘it’s time to nurse a baby again.’ Two grunts meant ‘it's your turn to change the diaper.’  No grunts meant ‘Don’t even think about touching me. That’s how we got here.’  Not my finest moment.  I have a bachelor’s degree in Communication and couldn’t talk to my wife.  We were lost.  I signed us up for class and we dropped the kids off with friends.  It was hardly date night, yet we were both committed.

There were 5 couples in Room 312 every Sunday evening for a month.  The facilitators were 12 minutes older than we were.  Once Carol shared the course materials, I lost it.  In the Ziploc of Fun was a workbook and a canvas mat.  I looked at my bride with a sense of foreboding only deeply entrenched pride can bring.  She knew immediately.  She shrugged and laughed.  Evidently our communication wasn’t so bad after all.  This canvas mat would require me to muster every bit of humility I had and then find a well of reserves I hadn’t yet known.  This was our ‘Jump to Conclusions Mat;’ literally the worst idea ever.  She knew I hated this and grabbed my hand as if to say ‘I know.  I see you.  Thank you for trying.’

Over the weeks, we practiced under the guidance of Carol and her husband (whom we’ll call Great Beard).  We would lay the mat on the floor and physically stand on it, moving our feet around the circle to the different areas, stating our wants, needs, questions, etc.  It was painful. Carol would keep us in check, realigning us to the rules in order to help.  Great Beard stood next to me silently hoping some of the masculinity seeping from his face would give me strength.  It did not.  I would state what I wanted for me, what I thought, what I felt, what I wanted for her, what I wanted for us and what I acknowledged in her.

• This was the first time I recognized that what I thought and what I felt were not the same thing.

• We both realized that what I want for her and what she wants for her might not be the same thing. I had become frustrated doing things for her that she really didn’t want, in turn frustrating her for doing an activity in order to honor what she thought I wanted. We were tired.

• She learned to state what she wanted - for her and for me.

Over the weeks and months we graduated from the mat to a pen-and-paper version (which had somehow eluded the Ziploc of Fun).  I cringed each time I saw that notepad on the table because I knew a chat was imminent.  In time, the tools became more natural. I still hear the cues on occasion, alerting me to shut up and listen.

We kept that mat.  It’s like a scar.  It’s not the ‘as I was crossing the Gobi desert’ kind of scar, but the ’the Spring Break in Panama City airbrushed t-shirt’ kind of scar.  I still shutter when I see that thing. Yet I’m grateful for Carol and for Great Beard.  I’m grateful for the friends that stood with us while we worked on our marriage.  I’m grateful that we have a set of tools to use should we need to return to relational fundamentals.  I’m grateful for a bride that saw what we could be and not what we were.

I’m grateful for how for how far we’ve come and am quite clear that we still have miles to go.  I know this because she used ‘what I want for me and what I want for you’ this weekend.  So, I shut up and listened.