Listening to God is...

"Listening to God is one of the most underwhelming, difficult, unfulfilling, confusing, and altogether frustrating experiences of my life."

A friend of mine wrote this sentence on his journal at our church website today. And it grabbed me when I sat down to read the entry tonight.

Because this is how I have felt lately. This is how I felt today.

This afternoon was one of the most stunning crisis moments yet. Everytime I think that things with this friend cannot possibly get worse, they seem to get astronomically worse. And I am left wondering if God maybe said the wrong name when He called me to serve her. If possibly God got confused and meant to appoint someone with age, wisdom and experience.

And so I sit there, and listen to her, and wonder what could possibly be the reason that I am being asked to do this. And God is stunningly silent. I listen to her, and I pray silently, begging him to take control of my lips as I begin to respond to the crisis. I don't know if He does - sometimes it feels like it. Sometimes there are insights that become suddenly clear, and I know that I need to share them. And sometimes, I just talk - practical common sense kind of things, and hope that those are God too.

And if positive steps are made while we talk, then the credit certainly belongs to God. Because who am I anyway? I'm twenty-two. I spent the last several years battling depression, nightmares, and emotional and spiritual issues. I have a degree in European history that hardly qualifies me to give sound insight on matters of physical, mental, emotional or spiritual health. On November 1, 2005, I met God in a more powerful and personal way than anything I've ever experienced, and my life has been a gong show ever since. He called me once again to serve, and it's been nuts. I've put out one fire after another. He's ripped open wounds in my life that I have no idea what to do with. I find myself on the brink of tears on a nearly daily basis as I think about these wounds - this from the girl who hasn't been able to cry in well over a year. I'm having weird dreams every night again - dreams that seem somehow significant, but for reasons I can't quite peg. I don't usually remember them, I just wake feeling restless and unsettled - a feeling that takes a couple hours to fight into submission. And yet, in the pit of my gut, I know I can't leave - ever. Because He's there, and He's doing crazy things, and I'm astonished every day that He's there. Wow!

But the fact remains that listening to Him is, well, all the things my friend named. And another friend swears to me that it will get better, get easier, and I hope he's right, because this is just crazy hard at the moment, and I could really use the "direct voice of God" in some of the wounds of my life, and in these crisis moments that I'm dealing with on such a regular basis.