- I find myself feeling stagnet and still again. This is clearly not the still that hears, but the still that needs to hear. I am half-way throught my twenties and again I am asking God where I am. I find myself on this well known, famous, plateau…this horizontal journy. I am growing quite tired of this dichotomy of failing for longer than I succeed. I suspect though, as they say, that is what sets up one’s greatest success. Everybody knows this; however, as you float your way through it, the failures are magnified and the sucesses are not even looked at as such. I am well aware that I am not the only one. What makes this even worse is when one asks God for direction, if he is not careful, it can turn into (or feel as though) another mindless religious “motion.” Then of course, as this failure mounts, when a brother or friend asks about what the problem is (after enough shameless pitiful hint-dropping, of which we are all guilty) the one with the issue, rather than sharing his soul (and present the oportunity for real connection) passes it off as “God is trying to teach me something.” Which The Almighty very well might be, however He certainly presented an opportunity for real connection, and both parties miss the chance to speak into each others’ soul. Not just to talk at the other person’s head (of which I am famously guilty, just ask my friends). If we are relational beings, (friendship and romantic) what makes us think that our “council” (certified or not) is what the people around us need? What makes us think that we are so far ahead of others? Why do we assume that if we have gone through something once, we are an expert and we will have no weaknesses in progressing through that valley again (even though, many times, what we have most to say about, we have never really experienced first hand, we just read it somewhere). What makes us think that we are the new authority? What makes me think that people actually want to listen as I expose my own inexperience, as opposed to listening to what makes their soul ache?
