Listening To Their Hearts

I confess; I'm too often task-driven.  I find myself frustrated around those who are so wrapped up in their "to do" lists that they can't entangle themselves long enough to stop for a bit of conversation beyond the surface, yet I fear I subject my precious family to the same frustration at times, by my own behavior.

Recently, I read something that made me pause to re-evalute, as I often need to do, my modus operandi.  Our daughter, Vera, whom we adopted from an orphanage in Ukraine just before she turned fourteen, was working on a persuasive speech about adoption.  I would like to share with you a few lines from her first draft.  Speaking of math class at the orphanage, ". . .When you don't get it, and everyone else is waiting for you to finish, the teachers scream at you that you are dumb and will never get it.  Can you imagine hearing that almost everyday for four years?  You start believing that they are right.  No one in the orphanage sat down with me to lovingly explain to me how to get it done. . . .I was wishing that I could belong to someone who would call me theirs and not be ashamed of who I was."

My heart ached for what she must have gone through.  Wasn't there someone who would take the time to minister to her heart, to listen to her heart and to give, without reservation, the abiding reassurance, the safe refuge, the patient encouragement, and the tender love she so desperately needed?

She no longer lives at the orphanage.  She came home with us in 2006, to join a younger brother and sister.  We wanted to give what she needed, and we resolvedly rearranged our lives to attempt to supply it.

Yet real life can get awfully hectic, and in the hustle and bustle of life, I find I have to keep asking myself, "Am I still listening to their hearts?"  All three of my children's hearts have urgent and weighty needs every single day.  Every heart in every one of our homes does.

Do we really know what our children need most?  Are we tuned into their hearts enough to sense when they desperately need a tender encouraging word instead of a stern reminder from a task-oriented organizer?  Oh, Lord, give us Your eyes to see their deepest needs.  Show us how to minister to their hearts as You would.  Love them Your way through us!

Slow me down; sit me down, with a smile, and not a frown, that I would love with no reserve and no regrets.

"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,

when it is in your power to do it."

Proverbs 3:27