Listening

I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately. A fight with your brother, your brother from another mother, your best friend, and your employer will do that to you, especially if all happens in one year. We like to tell our friends and our family that we "hear" them. We tell them that we understand. Do we?

I know that a lot of the time in my life I hear what I want to. I convince myself that my relationship with my friends is good because we talk a lot and we don't fight. My family and I haven't had a real blowout in a while, so we must be doing okay. I can even convince myself that my relationship with God is doing alright because, well, I got to church a couple times a week and I do a lot of talking there.

I don't always do so hot on the listening though. I don't really know what's going on with my friends because we don't talk about that. We talk about the weather, the size of shoes the babies are wearing, what they're doing at school. All this and I still don't know what's going on with them. Not really. Same thing with family.

Then there's God. If there's one thing I've learned in the 19 years since my conversion, it's that if I don't hear God talking to me, it's because I haven't been listening. My mind is a lot like a jar of fireflies. My thoughts buzz around in the air in there and never quite settle to the ground. I know this. I know this and I know how to settle myself but generally speaking, I don't do it. I don't do it because it takes time. It takes vulnerability. The thing about prayer that most people don't realize is that it's dangerous. If you let God into your life, if you let that still small voice get under your skin and creep into your brain, he pushes you. Sometimes it's to be friends with someone you don't think you want to be friends with, and sometimes it's right out of your comfort zone onto the cold concrete where you can't help but look at yourself from an outside point of view. I'm not saying it's fun. I'm saying that "it's always good and when the flood is gone we still remain". (Country song, Like the Rain, Clint Black.) I know that God is going to be there when I come out at the other end of this tunnel. He isn't fickle. He may not do for me what I think I want but he'll be there. Whether I'm listening or not, he'll be there.

Every time I think God isn't working fast enough or that he isn't hearing me I find it useful to ask " Am I listening?