Talkin' it over

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Something was stirred in me this weekend; I'd like to talk about it but I have to do a little back story first.

I have posted about that before, in Patience, Part 3 from the Plain Vanilla Files, but I'll copy out the pertinent bit here:

A number of years ago, I was in a situation that I considered to be just plain unfair. I had learned enough to know not to gripe about it to anybody else, but it was just really getting to me. Finally, I found myself driving home from the grocery store, completely alone (I had pre-school kids at the time...time alone was rare). Now, I thought, I can at least tell God how unfair this whole situation is! I opened my mouth and began to let God know exactly what I thought about the way I was being treated. I got about to the second sentence when He stopped me cold.

“Do you think I don’t know what’s going on?” I felt Him speak to my spirit.

“Well,” I replied, “I know You know, but I just feel like I need to say it out loud anyway…y’know, Lord, get it off my chest.”

Suddenly, the Holy Spirit showed me that I wasn’t sharing my heart with God – I was justifying my feelings. I saw that I was actually rehearsing my story so I could tell it for maximum effect later on! And, instead of turning the burden over to God, I was just getting myself more upset about the situation. I felt Him very deliberately tell me not to speak out loud what I was feeling. Big ouch!

The narrative goes on to explain that I obeyed that instruction, and over time the pain healed up.

Which is all well and good, but somehow I let that become the paradigm for dealing with any thing that bothered or disturbed me...I would not speak specifically about it, not wanting to reinforce the negative in my spirit.

Many, many times my prayer about a painful or confusing or frustrating situation was just 'Lord, You know...'

Pastor's Easter weekend sermon focused on the road to Emmaus.  It was plainly evangelic, calling in those who needed to take the road home, but some of the details applied so much to me that I had to fight back tears more than once during the 6 times I heard the message (once in the sanctuary; the other five live streaming back in my office as I worked on the data processing for the weekend).

It was a bit of a paradigm shift.

He pointed out that Jesus asked the two guys what they were talking about as he joined them.  He actually asked them to tell him what was going on.

Pastor pointed out that of course, he knew better than anyone what had happened, but he wanted them to tell him what was on their hearts. 'That's what a good Counselor does,' he observed.

That flew right in the face of my 'He knows and I don't need to hear myself repeat it' approach to such things.

Which means I had to come home and reconcile those two seemingly opposing instructions.

You've probably seen the difference already, but I can be thick skulled and boneheaded and I had to go back and look to see it spelled out.

It's the difference between whining and complaining, wanting to justify my thoughts/emotions and honestly telling God what is going on.  And I've been so determined not to do the first that I have kinda stopped doing the second.

Time to 'recalculate' my direction just a bit.

And I've got some things to tell Him.