Presence

What is your favourite word – presence or presents? I know how my child-self would answer, how about the adult Wayne?

I remember a brief holiday my wife and I had early on in our marriage at the idyllic town of Kaikoura, north of Christchurch on the road to Blenheim, in New Zealand’s South Island. We had only been able to snatch a few days and could never afford too many nights away, having only limited income.

In the morning, we had been out shopping, that is, window shopping for us, and I noticed her spend a little longer over one particular item she saw. I made a mental note that before the weekend was over I would try to extricate myself and get back to make the purchase. Wasn’t she going to be surprised!

As it happens in many relationships, while I was going down this track, she was entertaining her own thoughts of us enjoying a walk together, such as we rarely managed in our already busy family/church lives. The afternoon came to be our only available time left and she couldn’t find me anywhere. My hopeful wife thought she had arranged it so that we were both on board about the walk. My mind, on the other hand, was taken up with what I considered my great idea, and I had blocked all that out.

I cannot recall now if I even got the gift I had in mind. More than likely, I couldn’t find the shop again and wasted precious time trying to add value to our relationship when in fact the greatest value I could bring to our relationship that weekend was my presence, not my presents.

This glitch marred the end of our weekend together, and taught me some relationship truths I have never forgotten. I was certainly learning not to take our communication for granted, never to place store by assumptions – but much more than this.

A new song

Relationships only get nurtured by spending time together. I could never understand how our next-door neighbours sustained their relationship. The husband was away for weeks at a time, as he travelled as part of his work. Some people might deliberately plot time away from each other in their year to give themselves breathing space in their relationship but the Apostle Peter’s first ingredient for a healthy marriage comes in 1 Peter 3:7, “Husbands, dwell with your wives with understanding…” While the whole phrase is important and there are deeper truths for our reflection, listen to the first three words in Peter’s directive especially closely – Husbands, live with, dwell with your wives. Simply, be with them.

How much more significant this becomes in a relationship where one partner’s love language is quality time. This may not come naturally to you but guess what, you can learn to make another’s love language your own. There is now nothing I enjoy more than walking some new track or trail on a weekend, perhaps holding hands, always knitting closer hearts, discussing our week, our dreams, our different philosophies in life or take on things, sometimes in silence simply enjoying each other’s company or the song of the birds, often ending the afternoon with our favourite drink at a café nearby. It’s low maintenance, it’s closeness, it doesn’t break the bank.

...the Lord set in place from the very beginning that relationships only work in the context of time spent together, and plenty of it.

God would come down to walk with Adam & Eve in the garden, at the cool of the day. It was precious to Him. We read that Enoch walked with God and one day “God took him” (Genesis 5:24). It seems to me that the Lord set in place from the very beginning that relationships only work in the context of time spent together, and plenty of it. I can’t help wonder if His primary love language might also be time.

Certainly, He showed us once and for all the central heartbeat of all healthy relationships is time together.

The gift of presence!
Learn it earlier, it’s easier that way.
You’ll soon find it captures you as it’s captured others.