I’ve forgotten how to listen.
How to hear God when He speaks to me.
I spent the last year forging my way. Pushing and bending and breaking and forcing. Trying to manipulate the world around me to appear as I wanted it to. Granted, I do believe this mission I was on was the path I had been directed to follow. I look back on the initial hesitancy I had surrounding IVF, and I remember the prayers I said. I remember the nights I spent crying in God’s arms, just begging to be pointed in the direction I was meant to go. I remember hearing loud and clear that I was supposed to try. Not that I would even necessarily get pregnant, but that I needed to try.
I remember saying that even then. That I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but I just felt in my soul that I was supposed to try.
The problem is that as soon as I got that direction, I stopped listening. I put my head down and dug my feet in, and I plowed forward as fast and as hard as I could muster. Like a linebacker with only one goal in mind.
Or some other sports reference that really makes no sense at all coming from this non-sports-loving girl.
The point is, I got my direction from God, and then I stopped listening. I became consumed. Single minded. So focused, that I lost sight of anything in the peripheral.
And now, here I am. Life is still just as hectic. It hasn’t slowed. I haven’t slowed. I lay my head down each night literally exhausted from doing too much and fighting too hard. Only now, I don’t even know what I’m fighting for. I just know that I’m still pushing myself. Still plummeting myself into the world around me.
Still allowing the noise to consume me.
When in reality, I need to learn how to be silent again. How to listen.
I had my bible study meeting last night. I showed up late and was planning on leaving early. I’ve been exhausted (probably a combination of nerves and excitement surrounding this upcoming surgery) and I just didn’t feel as though I had the energy to commit to a group meeting. But once I got there, I was immediately sucked in. Immediately convicted of my need to begin listening to God again.
Painless or painful, enjoyable or distasteful, God always works to prepare us to serve Him, but He rarely prepares us in ways we expect. Why must we experience such preparation? Because any work we’ve grown accustomed to is usually a work completed. As soon as we’ve learned one lesson, He brings another. He will continue to work in us until we see His face, because that beloved, is the ultimate moment for which we’re being prepared. ~ Beth Moore
I walked in as the women were discussing these words from the study, and I was immediately humbled. I had read through the entire weeks lessons and had somehow missed this. This singular piece that should have hit home so hard for me. I didn’t even catch it.
I hadn’t been paying attention. Hadn’t been listening.
I sat mostly in silence as the women spoke about how the topics had touched them this week. They spoke about the things they learned, and about how reading about David’s heart had begun to change theirs.
Then, we stopped on the subject of Prayer. On how openly David spoke to God. How quick he was to both complain, and praise. And how capable he was of then sitting back and listening.
(Courtesy of Google Images)
I know I struggle with prayer. I waver between laying my desires upon God, and wanting to accept His will. Sometimes I get so caught up in how I should be praying, that the heart of my prayers is completely absent. And the dialogue is destroyed before it even begins.Because how can God respond to me when I’m not giving him my full heart? How can He speak to me when I'm simply going through the motions myself?
There is only one thing that has remained consistent in my prayers over the last however many months. One thing upon which I haven’t wavered.
Please just give me a baby. Please just give me a baby. Please just give me a baby.
I’ve often wondered if this is a prayer I should stop pleading. A request I should let go of for fear of becoming a nuisance. But not laying that desire upon His feet would be nothing short of dishonest. It would be another wedge between my heart and Gods. Another wedge I simply haven’t been willing to drive.
So it was when one of the girls raised a similar query that I finally spoke up for the first time all night. She asked how long you can continue praying for the same thing. How long you can keep asking, before it just starts to seem like you aren’t accepting God’s will.
Before it seems like you're ungrateful for what you do have.
I cut her off before she had even finished asking “I have prayed every night for the last year for a baby” I said. “And 2 failed IVF cycles and thousands upon thousands of dollars later – I am still praying.” I began to cry. Right there in front of those women I barely know, the tears were streaming down my face. “I pray every night for a baby, because I know God would not have put this desire in my heart if He didn’t plan on fulfilling it. I know that He would not have prepared me to be a mother in such a way, if He did not plan on utilizing me in that role. So, I pray. Every single night, I beg God to bring me to my baby.”
But then, I was hit with a realization.
Every night for the last year, I have prayed to God to fill the same desire.
And every night for the last year, I have then quickly rolled over and fallen asleep. I have woken up in the mornings and immediately blasted my music. Gone through my days driven and consumed. Spent my evenings writing and lost in thought.
Never once in the last year have I stopped to listen.
Never once have I given God the opening to speak back to me.
I have been talking, but I have not been listening.
And as that realization washed over me, I cried some more. Because God does speak to us. He speaks to all of us. He is always talking. But so often we are too busy talking back. Too busy ignoring. Too busy being busy.
And we simply don’t hear Him.
I mentioned this as I wiped away my tears, and all the women began chiming in with the ways that God had spoken to them. Some had heard Him through the words of a song. Some through the lips of their own children. Some through the stories of scripture. And some simply through feelings and inclinations.
Every one of these women had heard God, but each in their own ways.
Because, God will find a way to speak to you if you are willing to listen. God will get down on your level and make sure you understand.
But, you have to first be silent. You have to first be willing to hear what He has to say.
And, I haven’t been silent. Not in a long time.
I need to work on being silent.
I’ve forgotten how to Listen.
And God is speaking. To me, on my level, in a way that I can understand.
I just need to shut up long enough to hear him.
How does God speak to you?
He will always find a way…
