Screaming to be Heard: Musings on Travel

As we board the plane, the only thought is that our little child finds a way to charm everyone on board rather than make our ears bleed. That's the catch when traveling with infants/toddlers in closed spaces, you don't know how they will react and you don't necessarily know what they're trying to say or how they are trying to communicate. They utter words, phrases, usually broken as they are learning how to communicate, and if my wife or I don't pick up on what she's saying, then screaming commences. As I thought about this on the plane, I kept wondering how many teenagers and even adults feel like many infants and toddlers, screaming trying to be heard, misunderstood so many times because they couldn't come up with the words that expressed their feelings.

Many teenagers scream, act out, experiment, or rebel for the sake that they feel they can't be heard, or that no one is listening. As a father and youth pastor, it is often difficult to hear the mutterings of my daughter who is learning how to communicate language and then hear the screaming of teenagers trying to articulate the feelings that are forging their identities.

To add to the analogy, usually the utterances of a toddler can only be understood or decoded by the parent that hears them all of the time. The task with teenagers is more difficult because many of us only spend a small amount of time in the frame of the big picture of our day to day weeks. That makes the time we do spend that much more precious, that much more crucial. If our gatherings ever get to a "go through the motions" mindset, then we need to undergo the difficult task of reinventing ourselves, our mindsets, our ministries. This is the diligent task of ministry.

So in the middle of the temper tantrum meltdown, when it seems all hell is breaking loose, to be the calm, clear presence of comfort is sometimes the only thing that will defuse the bomb. "I'm right here," "what are you trying to say?," "I love you." As parent, as pastor, the power of presence is our greatest asset.