Give me patience to listen well. Please!

Last Sunday, as I did my volunteer task of signing people into in-person worship in the last days of covid-related restrictions, I found myself listening to a parishioner who stood near me for close to an hour, telling me stories about his life.

I wish I could say it was easy for me to listen attentively for that long to someone else talk. And talk. It was not easy. That intense, somewhat one-sided conversation, coupled with a few other shorter, but still rigorous listening exercises I had after the service ended, left me depleted by the time we returned home early afternoon. 

“You’re worn out,” Brent observed. 

“Yes,” I said. “I need a break from listening.” 

In my experience, listening to other people’s stories is a huge part of being a minister’s wife. Just as 50 is the new 40, maybe listening is the new piano-playing? 

Listening well takes deep patience.

I love a good, spirited conversation with lots of back-and-forth, so the role of sometimes quiet-listening pastor’s wife has not always been easy for me. I have some good stories to tell. Why doesn’t anyone want to hear those? Or, maybe even more dangerous: I have some opinions on this issue that I’d like to share! Keeping our ears open – and peace in the church – can sometimes mean keeping our mouths shut, and that is definitely not natural for some of us. I feel a bit old fashioned even writing it. But listening more than I talk has been one of the hard lessons to learn in ministry life, and points to the essential need we have for safe, listening and nurturing friendships for us. Even as we are good listeners, we need good friends who will listen to us too. (But that is for another blog). 

It can be hard to mostly listen, but there are benefits. Proverbs 21:23 sums it up nicely: “Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.” And James’ admonition in James 1:19 to be quick to hear and slow to speak carries a special weight for people married to clergy. We know how important that is, but for those of us to whom it does not come naturally, it’s a skill we might have to practice and learn. 

I’ve had to beat back my own ego many times, in order to be mostly the receiver of story and opinion, and less the giver. I didn’t earn the role of good listener in ministry, at least at first, but it was assigned to me by the assumptions people had that I wanted to hear and that I truly cared, because I was the minister’s wife. I had to try to live up to who they thought I already was.

I grew into my ears, slowly. 

In church halls, over tea and lemon squares, I have learned to listen. The first lesson was that patience and listening are part of the same discipline. One does not work well without the other. It takes patience to carry the lion-share of the listening in a conversation, at least for me. Attentiveness demands patience. There are times when I’ve prayed for more patience, even as I was in the very act of listening. It takes patience to not blurt out responses and interrupt. Patience is also required to listen for the heart of the person in their story, and not assume I know what they are trying to share. 

As difficult as I sometimes find it, I am thankful for the opportunity to learn to be a good listener. It has served me as a parent and in my life as a writer and a podcast host. My day-job requires me to interview people frequently, and my combat training as a pastor’s wife has helped me hone those skills of asking questions, listening to the answer, and not feeling the need to jump in with my own stuff and stories at the first possible opportunity. I see this skill in our now-adult children as well. They know how to carry on a conversation with just about anybody which will serve them in their three separate callings of law, conflict-resolution, and business. 

I wonder if the ability to listen and converse well is one of the surprising gifts of growing up as a pastor’s kid? I think so. 

As I reflect over my years of sometimes patient and sometimes not very patient listening, it occurs to me that another lesson has been that in our culture, there are many people with stories to tell and there are fewer people to listen well. By offering the sacrifice of listening, we are giving a gift to some people who don’t have a lot of people in their lives serving them in this way. 

“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together, one of the most beautiful books ever. 

Bonhoeffer calls this the “obligation of listening.” Listening is one of the ways we can love one another well, like Jesus told us to. I have also found that viewing listening as a spiritual practice – a holy obligation – can help me listen better. 

In listening, we learn. Sometimes the lesson might be about the depth of our impatience, and that can be hard to see but important to learn. Listening without looking for opportunities to leap in and bring attention to ourselves is a posture of humility and death to self that is rare in our culture. 

To listen is to learn and to love, and to grow – even ever so slowly – in patience. 

If you sometimes find listening difficult, you are not alone. If you need to take a break on a Sunday afternoon and curl up with a good book, take that time! You have probably earned it.