Yesterday I was putting mountains of clothes away upstairs as I watched my three boys in the backyard below me digging in a large hole of mud.

I had a report to give in about an hour and the babysitter arriving in forty-five minutes. I was already whirling around my home. I had no extra in-case-of-mud-buffer built in to my schedule.

I let the boys dig and kept putting away clothes until the pile has come to it’s end. Then I walked downstairs trying to breathe deeply to prepare myself for three mud covered children and also a quick prayer to Jesus that I would exude the fruits of the spirit instead of spewing the impatience of my tired flesh.

To my great surprise I found muddy clothes and boots in the laundry room and my boys washing the mud off their ankles and hands in the kitchen sink, the exact same process of demudding I have walked them through time after time over the last eight years. Without me saying a word, they just did what they were supposed to do.

And when I praised them my five year old simply replied, “Mom, we were just listening and listening is loving.”

Cue a:

Wait, are these MY children?

moment.

My children and I have not gotten to this place of automatic obedience overnight and pretty much, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, sixty-five times a day it feels as if my children are not listening to my voice at all.

But this moment was my diamond in the rough. The one moment I can cling to in three hundred and sixty-five days and see just for one moment my words, my constant words on repeat all day every day are not falling on deaf ears. That slowly, ever so slowly my words are settling into the nooks and crannies of the hearts of my children.

Listening is loving was very much our summer love language last summer.

I developed this love language of listening is loving between my kids and I for the following reasons:

1. Listening is life-giving to mommy.
2. Listening is not just hearing but hearing followed by action.
3. The action of listening must occur all the way, right away and with a happy heart.
4. Listening is an important skill for all of life.

I have said listening is loving, I have chanted listening is loving, I have yelled listening is loving, I have whispered listening is loving in the ears of my four children as they sleep soundly at night.

Like a broken record for almost an entire year. Listening is loving have been the words I have both yelled and cried to my children.

As I saw my children doing what they were supposed to do I couldn’t help but remember the words a friend of mine said to me almost five years ago. Rachel, you sow. And you sow. And you sow. Then much later you will reap. 

You sow. And you sow. And you sow. Then much later you reap. Much later.

Yesterday’s scene of muddy clothes automatically in the laundry room and children automatically demudding at the sink came after an entire year of constantly repeating listening is loving to the ears and to the hearts of my children.

There are so many moments when I am so tired of sowing. My heart screams phrases similar to: Mommy does not want to sound like a broken record.

Planting wisdom and words in to the hearts of my children is very similar to the dirty, back breaking work of planting seeds outside in the fields.

I’m scattering these words like seeds into the soil of their hearts so that with hope and prayer and divine intervention one day these seeds will grow and produce fruit. Produce evidence that my words have taken root. Produce automatic obedience all the way, right away and with a happy heart.

We have so much further to go with listening is loving.

I will probably say listening is loving a million times more, have three-thousand more bad days with a few diamonds scattered here and there.

But to reap a harvest of children who know that listening is loving to others with hope that they will connect this truth of listening is loving to listening to God and believing His truth…. that is the kind of harvest I am sowing for.

That kind of harvest is what makes the broken record of saying listening is loving a million times more worthy of the dirty, back breaking work of sowing.

Listening is loving.

You sow. And you sow. And you sow. Much later you will reap.