Stop, Collaborate and Listen

I am a morning person.

I love the morning dark, I love the morning light, I love the morning quiet and I love the excitement of possibility that morning holds.

However, through what can only be described as injustice, I have not been gifted a house full of morning people.  Some of these people I wake up with are convinced, in fact, that the morning is an opportune time to complain about all that the pending day might require. This, I may add goes against everything I, as a morning person, hold dear.  There are plenty of other hours in the day, to lament the day.  For all that is good and holy, EMBRACE THE MORNING!!! That's my motto.

Alas, some of my people, they disagree.

So I must brace myself each new day, tempering my excitement lest they receive my cheerful blessing as a curse. (Proverbs 27:14 anyone?) Of course, some mornings are better than others...

Monday morning, three of four Littles came down.  I was still high on morning, coffee and Jesus. Approximately three seconds into their appearance the high was gone. Which is sad, because I really, truly look forward to seeing them each morning- provided they show up after 6:30am.  (Rules are rules, kids.) I watched our morning crash like a train wreck in slow motion.  Nothing was good enough for breakfast, life was still unfair because they couldn't watch PBS (all weekday TV has been gone for over two months now!), school is the worst, I keep lying to them about when we leave for vacation (I have not, they just have a hard time with calendars), and on and on and on it seemed to go.

For one of these children in particular the moaning was even louder than usual.  I felt myself unraveling. It was the epitome of peeing in my Cheerios. Not even a full-fledged morning person has the stamina to defend against that kind of assault at such an early hour. How can I be feeling so fully filled with the Holy Spirit in one moment and completely defeated the very next?!?! (That's another post just waiting to happen.)

In the midst of all the complaining, I speak out loudly (er, yell), "what is going on with you people this morning???!!!!"  It was meant as a rhetorical question, obviously.  But the Extra-Whiny Little answered and said something quietly that must have caught my heart.  I didn't quite hear him, but for some reason I stopped unloading the dishwasher, looked at him and asked, "What?"

He repeated, "Momma, I just thought we were going to sit with you outside for awhile."

If we listen-listen to our kids, they WILL floor us. Not always in a bad way.  It is shocking how often I forget this.

The week prior our schedule had been off a bit, and as a result there were a few mornings where I was still outside, drinking coffee and finishing up my quiet time when the children woke up.  Upon awakening my three not-so-morning-people had joined me outside and we had sat together a bit before getting breakfast started.  I honestly had not thought much about it at the time, other than it was an "off week" for me. However, to at least one of them, the brief change of routine had meant so much more.
This child of mine had some new, yet hidden expectations for the morning.  In his disappointment of unexpressed and subsequently unmet expectations his discontent was gushing out in a generalized fashion.  Obviously, I cannot read little people minds.  I had no way of knowing he loved the change of routine he had experienced the week before. Looking back he had maybe dropped some clues, but hindsight is always 20-20. It was only when he spoke those expectations out loud that I was allowed to consider his wants and respond to them.

What struck me most though was that he was able to put his expectations into words.  (Maybe some morning drama could have been avoided had he expressed this the night before- but who cares!) He told me what he wanted. And he was direct about it. This was and is a huge thing.

I really do think our kids might be much better at this than we give them credit for.  Sadly, I am fairly certain it is us grownups, in our busyness, chaos, routine, anxiety and stress that have a hard time hearing them.  It's not just the hearing part, we Big People even struggle speaking aloud our own expectations.  Our kids have something to teach us.  Or maybe, this could just be me?

I know for sure that on any other morning he could have said the exact same thing and it would have gone in one ear and out the other- I would have unwittingly lumped that expressed hope into all the other gunk that was spewing forth from his mouth and completely missed it. But on this morning I didn't.  I heard and I was able to respond.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit hadn't fled the scene as I had feared?

Part of what gets me most in relationships is my unspoken expectations, especially the unconscious ones.  It takes work, effort and quiet to think through what it is that I am hoping from each day and from the people I am interacting with.  But expectations are just "ideas." They are creations of my mind and I have the power to define them.  I have the ability to name them.  Finally, I have the responsibility to express them.  Freaking YES, expressing them takes vulnerability and courage. Especially when I remember that other people might ignore my requests and that they have the right to deny them.  Honoring another persons refusal of my request is often the hardest thing for me.  It feels so much like rejection.

This "expectation sharing" requires chiefly, that we HEAR each other.  That we are listening to what the Other is saying to Us.  My boy's statement of desire would have been useless if I had not heard him.  Of course there are times when we are genuinely too busy to hear, too distracted, too engaged elsewhere in something that is really important and needs our focus.  That is life. Multitasking is a myth.  And I am not a Super Hero. So I am not going to beat myself up for being distracted by all their whining, or needing to get breakfast made and the dishwasher unloaded. I mean, come on, when 90% (I am possibly exaggerating) of what comes out of someone's mouth is whine, my very SURVIVAL (their survival) depends upon my ability to tune it out. Amen?!
 
What I am saying though, and I am preaching to myself here, is that I cannot say I want a more peaceful relationship with my husband, children or people in my life if I am not willing to listen more.  If I am not willing to stop, ask, "What?" and actually mean it.. If I am not willing to allow for spur of the moment-moments in which listening can happen, then listening won't happen.  Truth is, if I am too busy to hear my people, I am too busy.

Hearing, in many ways, IS the relationship.  How well we hear each other is how well the relationship is going.  Oh how I want to be a person, a mom, a wife, a friend who intentionally creates space for listening!!!!  Good listeners really are the BEST people.  Full disclosure, I talk much better than I listen.  I am a talker and definitely not one of the BEST people. Listening well is straight up hard work for me. In fact, keeping my mouth closed actually causes real live jaw pain.

So it was, on this particular morning a true gift that I happened to hear my boy and be allowed the honor of responding to his request.  I stopped unloading that dishwasher and right outside to that rocking chair we went.  If I have got the time, I might as well buck the normal routine, right? Routines are really just my own expectations on display.  And just because I am the mom doesn't mean my expectations always need or get to be the ones that are met.  It is okay, at times to let my kids have a say in how our day will go.

If they express an expectation or hope to snuggle and talk with me in the morning- do anything other than spout anger about the upcoming day really- I am decidedly all in.  After all, I am a morning person and the best hours I have to give myself, my children and the world truly come between 5am and 1pm,  As a morning person there is no guarantee what I will be able to give you from the afternoon on. It's a crap shoot really.  You night owls just need to deal with it.