Toad!

A couple of weeks ago my brother-in-law and his eldest son came to visit from the USA, their first visit since 2009! So, obviously, we went to France while they were here. We spent a couple of days travelling and a day at the Normandy beaches, with a trip to the Bayeux Tapestry thrown in. It was a lovely, if challenging time. We stayed in a town called Lisiuex and arrived after a long days travel, although to be fair it didn’t take us as long as it might have done, or as long as we were worried it might. The weekend before we went there were 21 hour delays, people waiting in their cars for 21 hours! So we left early anticipating a long wait at the tunnel. Turns out there were no queues and we arrived in France before we due to leave England. Never-the-less, by the time we got to Lisiuex, it had been a long day. We drew into Lisieux excited about what the town would be like and what our accommodation would be like (you can do all the research you want but you never really know until you get there). We got to the crossroads knowing we needed to go straight across, but saw a French policeman sitting in his car blocking the road! No problem, we thought, Google maps will re-route us. And indeed it did, around a few roads, only to bring us right back where we started and still not able to go down the road to our accommodation. So we parked up and went to speak to said policeman, who was still sitting in his car. It turned out his English was about as good as our French! And he had a very puzzled look on his face when we told him we needed to go down the road he was blocking to get to our accommodation. Then he smiled! And chuckled! For a moment we had no idea what was going on until we realised that we had, in fact, told him we need to go down this toad! Then we laughed! And so did he! We managed to figure out the road was closed until midnight because there was a cycling event in the town that afternoon and evening! We’re laughing about it still, actually. It was funny. But it was also bad communication. Perhaps we could have learnt a bit of French before we went, after all, it was over 40 years ago that I learnt it in school. But learning French takes time and effort. Perhaps learning to communicate well takes a bit of time and effort too. Sometimes bad communication is funny. Really funny. Sometimes it’s not. We could laugh about our bad communication. Sometimes it’s no laughing matter. How many relationships have failed because of bad communication? How many heartaches could have been avoided with good communication? How many problems have been caused by poor communication or mis-communication? Lisa and I both trained as counsellors at the same time, on the same course. Some people thought it was a bad idea. Turns out, it was a really good idea. But it was hard work. Sometimes very hard work. It required a lot of effort. And not just once. It required effort over a long time. Lisa and I learnt a whole new language with which we could communicate, which has been invaluable in our relationship. Mind you, you might sometimes hear me say: “Don’t do that counsellor thing on me. I know exactly what you’re doing!” Truth is, we have learnt whole new way of communicating, especially in the difficult conversations. God, it seems, has worked really hard at communicating with us. And many times, he’s found extraordinarily creative ways of trying to communicate with those he loves. If you don’t believe me, go read Ezekiel or Jeremiah! The greatest piece of creative communication in human history is God’s work: the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He wanted to tell us just how much we are loved. His greatest desire for me is that I am fully known by him and that I know him fully. That might take some work. I figure that if I want to know him fully and be fully know by him, I might have to be ready to work at it.