Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
I knew she needed more time with me; not just a 'what was for dinner', 'how were your classes today' chat.
It doesn't always mean something is wrong - it is more often that she is pondering something or sensing a sift in her life and needs to talk through it. It can be a mood she's feeling...
Whatever it is she is searching for wisdom.
How grateful I am that she comes to me. That she ultimately seeks wisdom from God, and she comes to me knowing that I will pour into her.
I don't have all of the answers, she knows that. She doesn't come for an 'answer'. She comes for my spiritual perspective. She comes to me to glean from what I might know.
How do I prepare for these such 'heart to hearts'?
It's years really. I can't 'prepare'. My preparation to meet my eighteen year old's heart happened year after faithful year of getting up and spending time in God's Word, in prayer, with my own heart open to God each day for what He might be teaching me. In a bathrobe and messy hair, when it was dark out and everyone was sleeping. It was when I was 20 and 23 and 34 and 42 and 49. Day after day, year after year in prayer or with a devotional. My notebooks filled cover to cover with those early mornings and what I learned.
I often don't go back to those notebooks. There really is no way I could search for a topic for a verse that way in a 'heart to heart' with Anna. I need wisdom in my own heart. Sometimes a verse will come right to me and I can look up the part I've forgotten, sometimes I just have a 'knowing' of what to say. But I always listen, listen, listen, especially when she starts off. And then listen some more.
And then I share what I can. I always go into these specific conversations with prayer and God always meets me with words for her; often ministering to myself as well as Anna.
We always close in prayer on the phone together. I love the feeling of hearing her voice lifted from our talk. And always late that night Anna will text me with a thank you.
Anna is quickly becoming my very best friend {after Scott}. And these 'heart to hearts' are truly a dream {prayer} come true for me.
I know that Anna coming to me asking for a heart to heart didn't just happen because she is away at college. It didn't happen by accident. Knowing she could come to me came from seventeen years of shaping our family. Because she grew up steeped in the tradition of the Church, in scripture and truth, in beautiful and lifegiving practices, a sacrificial example of love at home, she has carried those virtues with her and knows that she can tap into those in a simple phone call we call a heart to heart.
A book I'm recommending this week is:
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