An Experience in Effective and Non-Effective Communication

Protestant reformer John Knox said, ‘You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.’

This past week (probably due to selfishness and self-centeredness on my part) I haven’t been the best wife. Yes, I’m a homeschooling mother of three boys and I know I have a lot to learn still, even though I have worked in childcare for years, both as a minder and as a preschool/grade school teacher.

The issue was that I felt overworked and underappreciated, and I told my husband so. Problem was the way I conveyed it. I accused him of neglecting his fatherly duties to his sons, all the while polishing my halo by telling him how hard I was working both with our boys and in the ministry.

Men being as they are, he only ‘heard’ the examples I gave and immediately tried to explain that I was wrong in this detail or that.

That was not the response I had in mind. I wanted him to step up and take more responsibility. But the way I presented it was to accuse and antagonize. As he felt under attack, he responded with his defence, and when he realized I wasn’t going to accept that, he told me that I was making myself miserable by thinking too much about myself all the time.

We went about our evening separately and eventually fell asleep. For those of you who have only seen me smiling, you wouldn’t have recognized me. I was so mad!!!

This morning, I remembered the quote mentioned above. I thought to myself, ‘What was I thinking? What good did all that antagonism really accomplish, aside from bad feelings between us?’ The more I thought about all that my husband does, not just for me and the boys, but for everybody and anybody that needs his help that he hardly has time for himself, I realized he was right. I was only thinking about me and blowing the whole situation out of proportion. I apologized as soon as I could (I had thought about all this before my husband woke in the morning) and we prayed together for greater love and unity between us.

The difference between today and yesterday still is mind-blowing to me. So much peace and happiness in the house, not to mention the productivity factor was through the roof!! Between the two of us, we managed to get a lot of work done, spent both quality and quantity time with the boys, and still had time for individual personal projects.

The Bible tells us in the book of Philippians, ‘Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.’ That’s the problem and the solution in a nutshell.