“A still small voice”… this is what I am told. Wait for it. Maybe your life is too cluttered to hear it. Maybe you need to rest. Am I the only one who doesn’t hear it? Why do I feel like prayer is not the answer I need?
It is so hard to be in a relationship with someone you cannot see. I am learning this more and more each day. As I pursue grad school, I am told of the countless ways to pray, express my theology, and care for others. I am challenged to bring my own experience and spiritual growth to the table. Spiritual growth? What growth? I feel like I haven’t been growing for some time. If we want to talk about anger and bitterness, I would be willing to show you growth. I feel like that is the only growth I have been involved in lately.
They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step, yet they don’t tell you what the next one is. I have learned that I have an issue with codependency. I have felt the pressure of family, career, school, and ministry overburden me. I gave other people power over my life and my decisions. I clung to those in need and felt it was my duty to fix it (whatever it was). I finally found myself trapped in a downward spiral… one filled with pain, anger, and a bitterness I never knew.
Pain… pain… that seems to be a dominant theme in my life, but I am only now realizing that some of that pain is self inflicted. I gave some people the authority to create and recreate pain in my life. I became the victim, but not always at the hand of others. I could have walked away from the pain. Instead I stayed in a state of comfortable discomfort. I wanted out, but I was scared of what “out” would look like. I have been told to seek God, but how?
Prayer… it is literally everywhere in my life, and I can’t escape it. I am taking a class in it at school. I am teaching it in the children’s ministry. Now it is being taught to me at the church. So, why am I not learning anything? I mean to say that I have learned so much but have not applied it to my life. I find myself confused by this relationship to a God I cannot see. How can we interact? It is not a relationship or conversation if I do all the talking. So, how can I hear God? Does he hear my pain?
I feel that God has asked me to enter into a season of prayer. To tell you the truth, I am uncomfortable with the thought. Maybe that is because I don’t know where to start. I have a new appreciation for prayer, but I cannot seem to focus. It is not easy for me; although, I know several people who do not feel the same way. I feel like I am in the desert. I have a lot to do before I can find my way out, but I am ostracized at the same time. It is in these moments that God can speak to me, but I am so stubborn that I do not want to listen. So, I continue to clutter my mind with my own agenda, hoping this season will end before I have to participate in it. I don’t allow God to speak in “a still small voice.” If he wants my attention, he needs to grip my heart and pull me in a direction or surround me through every facet of my life. Since prayer seems to be the theme, I think it is time to shut up and listen. I only hope I haven’t missed anything God was trying to say.