Commitment to Communication

I am hurting.

There are many reasons I could say that. My hospitalization for a second infection since the house fire is one. The fire itself is another. But a third and more immediate cause for my statement, is the sense of abandonment and even betrayal by some family and friends, abandoning me, Jasini, and our son NoLynch.

At the heart of my hurt is communication. Thus my following big detour into other personal history for an example.

For 20 years I worked for an international bank and for 13 years I was an on the job trainer for that bank, across cultural boundaries, through computer mediated communications. They were having trouble in communicating across cultural boundaries, and I convinced my VP that reimbursing my expenses to get a master’s in communications would pay big dividends in what I could give back to the company. So over four years they reimbursed me $55K, and just as I completed the degree, my VP changed to someone else, who decided I could be released instead of using all the information and skills they had paid me to acquire.

It was an amiable separation, but showed a lack of commitment to communication. I have attempted to use what I have learned since my departure, but have continued to run into that same lack of commitment to communication.

As I look back on my OJT years, the one thing I recall with great clarity, is how fortunate I was to work with the foreign office that I did. Because we miscommunicated a lot, we knew we did, expected we would, but we had an unspoken commitment that we would continue to communicate, to miscommunicate, until the mis part of the communication disappeared and we understood. Very few onshore/offshore office relationships were like that.

This is the key to real communication. And yet, while Jasini and I have never (seldom) failed to keep striving to communicate, we have found the other side drop us and kick us, and excommunicate us, and stop talking to us. Churches, social groups, parents, siblings, friends, not all of each category, but it seems like many to most in each category, has done just that to us.

I think of a few who have not, who have held in there, amazingly, and I am amazed by their grace to us. It helps us keep on keeping on. But the abandonment by the others, especially parents, is a great hurt. We keep trying to pursue the mission of reconciliation, but staying with it is hard when the other side is all resistence.

But hurt or no hurt, I stay committed to communication. Those of you of like heart with us in Christ, I beg you to keep us in mind and prayer before the Altar of Grace. Such hurt is no reason for us to stop. Help us hold the course.