What’d ya say?

Fifteen month old Emerald learns a new word virtually every day now, and yesterday she came up with this one: “Gar!”

At first I didn’t know what she meant. When she said it, she was on the kitchen floor focusing on something very small, which turned out to be a rice-sized tidbit of paper. Using her petite thumb and finger, she managed to pick it up and held it high for me to see. “Gar!” she said, smiling broadly.

Though I wished I’d had an interpreter, she let me know what it meant by acting it out. Crawling to the cabinet door under the kitchen sink, she opened it, stood up, and dropped her smidgen of paper into the trash basket there. “Gar!” she said, and of course she meant “garbage.”

It’s an important benefit to any relationship if we can fully understand what a loved one is trying to tell us. But what happens if the words we hear aren’t an accurate representation of the opinion or feelings of the speaker?

Gary Chapman says part of why we misinterpret each other (which can cause arguments, hurt feelings, or confusion) is that different people “speak” in a variety of languages. He calls them love languages, and we hear best when the one communicating with us is “saying” it in our language.

Sadly, when someone tries to explain to us what they’re feeling, we often receive it differently than how they mean it, or at least differently than they think they’re saying it. When that happens, our conversation is headed for trouble.

Learning to be a good listener is tricky. First we have to want to be one, and a prerequisite for that is to willingly set aside our preconceived opinions about the subject at hand, while the other person is talking. This can be a monumental challenge and requires lots of practice. (Take it from someone who has frequently flunked this part.) If, however, we can accomplish that and then listen carefully, our original opinion about the person or their message will probably have changed, and improved communication will be the result.

Working hard to develop good listening and speaking skills has another benefit, too. It trains us to become better at our back-and-forth with God. Thankfully he always knows the perfect language to get through to us, and no matter how inept we might be at our conversational efforts in return, he interprets our heart’s intentions correctly 100% of the time.

Practice may not make us perfect, but it’ll get us closer. As for Emerald, later that same afternoon I followed her back into the kitchen where she was doing some practicing of her own. “Gar!” she said again. And I rounded the corner just in time to see her stuffing a clean dish towel into the trash. Smiling up at me she said, “Gar!”