Be Quiet and Listen

Ever felt really exhausted after talking with someone, well, more like they did all the talking and you maybe got in a few discarded thoughts here and there (or so they felt discarded)?  I mean, I realized that talking with talkative people is exhausting, yet when I get the chance to spill everything onto someone else I almost feel that my words should have changed their lives or at least brought in some sharper understanding of what I know to be true to me.  I always expect a good response, maybe even a shade of admiration, but most of the time I don't get that.  I don't always get the impression that they just want me to shut up already, but I do sense that my words fall ineffectively onto the ground a lot of the times and it's as if they thank me for everything and I sort of begin scooping up my words off the floor like a man who drops his suitcase papers and gathers them up for the next meeting.  Well, now I am starting to think that perhaps I am just as exhausting to listen to as I am exhausted by listening to others.  So the question is why?  I mean, I feel as though I have some valuable revelations to share that could benefit others as they have benefitted me, but then I wonder if my goal with talking is to benefit them or to share what I know.  What I mean is this, upon closer inspection of my actions do I say what I say because I love them or do I say what I say because I want love from them?

Sometimes we need room to be an adult, not a child.  Making the decision to listen came through learning what is important for having a meaningful life: my relationships with others.  I tend to generalize things and make them black and white, but a lot of the times life is about having an effect not just getting something done.  If the choices I make are "right" in the sense that they follow some kind of structure rather than the goal for the structure, then what I do no longer has a goal, it just has a time frame, and things that only take up time are meaningless.  My decisions must be made out of the highest possible understanding in attaining my goal, and not because it is just right or even just more right than an alternative.  Of course this is assuming you have already reached an understanding for having a goal in mind at all.  My goal being: having a genuine relationship with an invisible God.  As I hear and process God's word I see things that become more important like relationships and self-awareness.  There are endless areas of my life that could be better, not meaning that there are endless areas of my life that are wrong or terrible, but only that they could be better.  I could overwhelm myself to the point of giving up and curling up behind the pillows of apathy for a nice long nap, but eventually I will wake up again and things will be just as I left them.  (Yet I always have this strange idea that they will have magically shifted by my good fortune, and that my friend is a deceptive lie to keep you from ever really doing anything.)  Life is not easy, but it can be very good.

Be quiet and listen.  I''m not telling you to be quiet and listen to me, haha, although ....nevermind.
I'm telling myself that I need to be quiet and listen to others when they speak to me.  More than that, I want to work my ears up to a point where I intentionally go to others just to listen, not just listen when spoken to.  I want to be able to convey love.  When God's word says to love others, then my goal in having a more genuine relationship with God requires that I take steps to genuinely applying His words to my life.  To convey love to others must be genuine in the same way that my pursuit of God is genuine.  Sometimes I can get preoccupied with the task and forget about the goal, loving others become a task where I look to what appears like loving others and do that rather than having that heart to put tons of effort into being intentional and conscious of the way my words and actions have an effect on others in hopes of them feeling loved by me.  I can spend hours with a person sharing all the revelations I have gotten with the initial intention of wanting to help them, but if loving them is required first to have any effect on their ingestion of my words than before anything else I must seek to make them feel loved.  From my past years of experience, and from examining what is effective on me, I think for a time I will just be quiet and listen.  This will probably even benefit my understanding of others more as well.

I'm working on loving others now, one crinkle at a time.

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing." - 1 Corinthians 13 1-3

According to this, I can't do anything if I don't get this love thing down first.

First thing's first:

Love is patient, love is kind.

Being quiet and listening (for me) is an act of extreme patience.  As for kindness it will be holding my opinions in and just buying them coffee, and then making an effort to pray that God helps me to genuinely love them even if the feelings are not automatically there (which is the case more often than not).

Oh, reminding myself to do this everyday via sticky note is also pretty crucial.  I'm so forgetful.

-J