Everyone gets interrupted. It happens every day.
You start to do something and you get a call from that telemarketer you’re so fond of. You sit down at your computer to begin working and your email begins to ding as if you’ve just hit the jackpot on a slot machine in Vegas. You’re getting one child ready for school when the other decides that the syrup on their pancakes would be a good medium for finger painting.
Interruptions are also a part of marriage.
Attention is like air to our emotional lungs. Without attention, babies fail to thrive. Without attention, children struggle emotionally and scholastically. Without attention, isolated people become loners and sometimes threats to society. Without attention, marriages flame out like cooling fireworks falling to earth. Without attention, the light in a senior’s eyes quickly dims.
Every soul needs attention, but attention is the one thing that we cannot get for ourselves. (Yes, yelling “fire” in a crowded theater will get you attention, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.) Attention – the kind brings life to our soul – cannot be taken. It must be given as a gift.