Being Present

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.” – Psalm 62:5

Two years ago, we came up with a family mission, vision, and values statement, and one of our values was peace. I was thinking today how I yell at the kids less than I used to. Yelling at kids is easy, especially when you have a lot of them: it’s the poor man’s method of crowd control.

In retrospect, two things have helped the most with that: one is making sure I have my kids’ attention when I communicate, and the second is having an expectation of first-time obedience. The latter has to do with realizing that if I have an issue with my kids’ compliance, the solution is not more yelling, but effective discipline. Yelling is just beating them over the head with verbal demands, which kids have an amazing ability to increasingly tune out; it’s an odd sort of auto-vaccinating process. Discipline addresses the heart of their behavior in a process that involves as much understanding as asking. Discipline takes a lot more time and work, but it saves you a whole lot of potential yelling down the road.

The former issue sounds pretty basic but was just as revolutionary: making sure my kids can hear me when I talk. Lots of times I’d get frustrated at them just to realize they couldn’t hear me calling up to the second floor, or even just across a room when they’re otherwise occupied. What we hear is a product of what our priorities are and how present we are—so yeah, I think getting somewhere on time is important and I’m pretty present to what needs to get done next to accomplish that, but my kids think their imaginary story is important and are more present to that than my asking them to get their shoes on. If I want my kids to be present for me, I have to be just as present to where they are in their worlds.

It makes me think about how present we are for people in general. Obviously we do have to get things done, but I can remember even as a kid wishing my mom would just sit down to ask me how I was doing, and listen. I think about how often I tell my kids to hurry up, or wait until I finish doing a chore to read to them, or think whew now I’ve got some time to get stuff done when they start playing well together instead of how can I join them and enjoy their play?

There are some practical ways we try to be present for the kids. Dave tries to sit down with each one of them alone at some point during the day to talk. We take turns taking each of them (well, the older three at this point) out on dates once a month. We try not to look at our phones too much in front of our kids—it’s amazing how much we tune out when we’re glued to our screens, and it sets a bad example if we expect our kids to be screen-free. We work on not interrupting each other so we can listen when someone talks.

But a lot of it is just a mindset. Do I wake up thinking, how can I be present for my kids today? How can I be present for Dave—for God? How often do we do the equivalent of yelling at God—this is what I want, this is how I feel—instead of waiting in silence? How often do we treat God like a consultant instead of the God that he is? And if we understood who he is, how could we be anything but present?