Communication between people is dangerous because there’s so much room for misunderstanding. The very act of communicating is difficult because the meaning of the words can change depending on tone (e.g. sarcasm can be joking or demeaning), volume (e.g. fear can make it softer or louder), and the people involved in the communication (e.g. talking to my guy friends is different than talking to my wife). There is also the problem where some people are more direct in what they say (i.e. they can be too blunt) while others are more “read between the lines,” (i.e. terrible communicators). To take this a step further, communication is at high risk of misinterpretation because of three main levels:
- The person speaking needs to know what to say and how to say it in a clear way.
- The person listening needs to hear what’s actually said, and have enough understanding of the language and situation to interpret it properly, and not take it personally.
- The person listening needs to remember what was said properly, but memories are fickle.
In previous posts I’ve used examples of my wife struggling to say what she means and I had to help her figure out what she actually meant. For instance, there was the story I used the other month where she said she felt like a single parent, but when I asked, “When you say you feel like you’re an only parent do you mean you’re an only parent or do you feel lonely?” she agreed she meant lonely. If I took exactly what she said as truth, I would’ve started a fight: “How dare you be honest about your feelings!” Instead, I needed to remember words can be misused and misinterpreted, which meant as someone who loves her I needed to double check. I regularly have to help clients figure out what they want to say: “In one sentence what is it that actually bothers you? Do you feel betrayed, rejected, disrespected, unloved, unsafe, etc.” When we communicate there is lots of room for error, especially when emotions make us say and hear things wrong: “But it feels like…” Yes, but is that a true feeling or is that your brain twisting things? Our brains lie to us all the time. Even more frustrating is when listeners make the conversation all about themselves instead of helping the other person feel understood. The number one rule of listening is help the other person feel understood, but most of us suck at that: (listener) “So what you’re saying is nothing I do is good enough.” (speaker) “I just said I’m struggling right now. How is this about you?” (listener) “If you’re not happy, I must not be a very good partner… like how I’m twisting your sharing into an attack against me even though that wasn’t at all your intention.”
The basic conclusion I have with communication is we need to be careful not to take it so seriously. That means not getting into the trap of saying things like “When you were angry you said (blank)? Yeah, I’ll never let that go,” or “You know how you said (blank) five years ago, I’m still hurt by that.” We need to be quicker to double check what was intended and/or simply let it go because people say things they don’t mean all the time, especially when they’re hungry, tired, over stimulated, or in pain. I try to follow my own advice: half listen. This means not taking everything to heart as Gospel truth while trying to understand what the person is actually trying to say based on their body language and emotion: “So what you’re really trying to say is…”
Another reason communication is limited is sometimes stories grow or change. Last week my lesson looked at how I had a tarp covering the back half of my house’s roof during the construction of my addition and I was at a standstill for a week because the framers were on their scheduled holiday. If you read that post it likely sounded like it all worked out – Nope. Not even close. I posted it on Friday, but I originally wrote it on Tuesday. Wednesday night the story took a very different path.
In my post I wrote that after a brutal Saturday and Sunday night with trying to prevent flooding I questioned if this was the devil messing with me or God’s way of saying I made a bad choice to do the addition. The next day I received three verses that were encouraging: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Pet 5:8) “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10) “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mat 28:20). After the rains on the weekend I had what I thought was a pretty solid system in place to prevent problems, and felt better. And it would’ve been solid in normal rains, but Wednesday was not normal.
Wednesday I woke up around 3:30am because my cat was excessively meowing. She’ll sometimes do that when she really wants outside, but with our upstairs open, she can get in and out on her own, so this was strange (nothing like having a house animals can come and go as they please). Groggy, I went to the kitchen to let her out and almost fell because I slipped in a giant puddle of water – that’s not good. It was raining pretty solidly and the water had been coming in somehow. I quickly put towels over the floor to soak up the water, cut out holes in the ceiling to let water flow out in a more controlled way, and then went upstairs to the tarpped off area to see what was going on. My guess was there was so much rain some water was getting down the walls, so I created barriers to prevent that from happening again. The benefit of getting upstairs is I found there was a small section that had started leaking that hadn’t before. I put some large blue bins on top of tarps to help with that, and with things in better order I went back to bed with adrenaline pumping making sleep impossible. About 15 minutes later, thunder! But this wasn’t distant thunder. This was thunder that felt right outside our window. I got out of bed and ran upstairs because something told me it was about to get crazy… and it did. As I got up to the tarpped roof area, lightning. But this wasn’t a little flash. It was the brightest, blinding flash of lightning I’ve ever seen. Despite there being a blue tarp, the light was so bright I had to close my eyes and turn away. As I opened my eyes it was like there was a pool above me ripped apart as this crash of water came down… and it kept coming down. All the work I had done to prevent the other rains from damaging the house was made almost useless as the rain pounded the house. It was an incredible reminder of how little power we have to nature and it was terrifying. During the three other rainfalls I stayed level headed, but this time I was waiting for the whole tarp to be ripped in half – it was pounding so hard. Since I had already put out all of my buckets and containers I had, I started throwing any towels and blankets down I could find to catch the rain hitting the inside house tarps so hard they were exploding into areas of the room still covered by the original roof and not getting the rain. I was utterly helpless beyond screaming for God to stop the rain… but it just kept coming.
My wife somehow slept through most of this, but near the end of the downpour she called up, “Do you need help?” and I screamed “Yes!” loud enough for her to hear, but not in a way that would wake up the girls who were also somehow sleeping despite the raging storm. What was strange was Saturday and Sunday night, my wife had been in tears and this time she was the opposite. She slowly sauntered upstairs and while I was panicking, she couldn’t have been more casual about the whole thing. She didn’t seem numb. She actually didn’t seem fazed in any way. The next day I asked her about it and she responded, “What? We were screwed. What did it matter? Everything just sucks.” She had been broken. Her fear and sadness had turned to resentment toward the workers for being on holiday and leaving us in this position. Fortunately, being someone who is working on her self control, she agreed it would be best she stay away from the house when the workers were there to prevent her losing it on them. Self control isn’t about having good feelings; it’s knowing how to avoid sharing feelings in a hurtful way.
At 530am the storm had passed and there was nothing left for my wife and I to do, I messaged the framer half begging half telling him to come do something before the rain being called for on the weekend because we couldn’t handle anymore than this. What was interesting is when my phone turned on it happened to be on the weather APP with the map of where the storm had been and it was just a small section where we lived that was hit. Most of the city didn’t get anything – awesome. It definitely felt like it was the devil messing with us again. This time, however, I realized that the third verse was in play: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mat 28:20). Out of the four storms, God protected us by letting the rain start with the lightest ones and build up. If the first storm was the third or fourth, we would’ve been destroyed.
In my last post I wondered why God didn’t direct me away from certain workers and situations when I had prayed for guidance. Maybe He did help and I’m not seeing it, but this time I will argue God’s divine intervention came through the cat. If it wasn’t for the cat meowing, there would’ve been a lot more damage. I don’t know if the cat was meowing because she didn’t like that there was water in the house or if this was her way of warning us. Whatever the reason, her meowing got me out of bed and helped me clean up a mess that was about to get worse. It also had me reinforce a weak spot upstairs and put out some blue storage bins that ended up with an inch of water from thunder storm. She was our protector. Whether God specifically used her to communicate to us or not, it was a miracle.
Fortunately, the framer came the next day and fixed the main part of the roof by spreading the plywood across it under the tarp (what they should have originally done). Things should be fine now, right? Nope. The next night it rained and very little water came in… under the plywood spot. The kitchen now had a waterfall coming out of the holes I made Wednesday night. It came in faster than the night of the pounding rain – what was going on? I found a small 10 inch square at the top of the roof had been exposed when they redid the tarp and now the water was being caught like a funnel to come into the house. This spot likely was the leak before, but the other tarp had done some protection, but now there was nothing. Fortunately, my brother in law was there to hold a ladder while I put a tarp over that hole, which soon stopped the indoor waterfall feature my wife and I didn’t want.
Looking at these five crazy rain experiences in a week (during July, a month traditionally known for being dry), we were protected. If the first four storms hadn’t gotten progressively worse we wouldn’t have survived the last couple. If I hadn’t been home and awake to deal with this, we would’ve had much more damage. If I hadn’t cut holes in the ceiling Wed night, the rain water coming in Saturday night would’ve shot all through the ceiling looking for ways out and would’ve destroyed a lot more than a section of the kitchen ceiling. And again, if it wasn’t for the cat meowing, we would have had lost a lot more in the storm. Sometimes divine protection doesn’t stop all the bad things from happening, but it can help prevent things from being much worse. Of course, like in all communication, there is room for interpretation.
This week may you consider how communication can get us in trouble or save us from trouble.
Side Note: I’m posting this after having faced a sixth storm and another two-three hours panicking to save the house. This time I didn’t have my inside roof set up anymore because the framing was finished and the roofer who was supposed to be here Tuesday is now coming tomorrow. Fortunately I quickly created a new set up with something I had thought of last week, so I was kind of prepared. This time, my protector was my mom who suggested she come to my house instead of me going to hers for our normal Thurs night she babysits while I work set up. I had no idea there was a storm even coming. It’s amazing how much we need help from others. It’s another reason we want to be kind and have connections.
Rev Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)