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Key Bible Verse: So listen to me and let me express my opinion (Job 32:10). Bonus Reading: Job 29:23-24

Intimacy requires the sustained work of talking and listening. Lovers can't adopt roles that make one of them a talker and the other a listener. Both must talk. Both must listen.

Lee must speak to me about the things that matter to her, and I must listen. It's hard for her because she must use precious energy retained after tending two children to help me relive with her the daily triumphs and defeats of that tending. It's hard for me, because I must put aside my preoccupation with work to enter into her telling.

I must speak with Lee about the things that concern me, to make her a partner in the legal research that fills my days, in the doings of the students I teach, and in the goings on of faculty politics. This work is hard because it requires me to make what has already passed into something present for Lee. It's hard for her because she has preoccupations of her own yet is called upon to enter, at least partially, into a life not her own.

Each word spoken and listened to is like a line cast between two ships, grappling them together. Our aim is to bind ourselves together by innumerable cords so that we don't drift apart.

—Timothy L. Hall in The Labor of Love

My Response: Something I need to learn to understand about my wife is …

Thought to Apply: Communication between people is so frightening that there's a continual talking about other things, rather than what is at the root of their relationship. —HAROLD PINTER (British playwright)

Adapted from The Labor of Love (Kregel, 1996) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, I want to move beyond a shallow relationship with both You and the mate You've blessed me with. Please help me in both areas.

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