Can You Hear Who Your Heart Longs to Be?

Sometimes life gets too busy and too noisy to hear the inner workings of our hearts.  We don’t pay attention.  Maybe we have forgotten how.

Lost happens when we don’t know how to listen.

I think my invitation to Quiet has been like a long time out.  The kind I sometimes give to my children, saying: “You need to learn to listen!”

I was really bad at listening.

Do you ever hope that someone with special insight will come into your life and tell you:

This is what you were made to do [insert epiphany here].
This is your mission, should you choose to accept it [insert life instructions here].
Here are the answers to all of those pesky questions swimming around in your   brain [insert an encyclopedia set here].
Yep, God is real, and here is why [insert some amazing revelation here].
This is how you get from point A to peace [is there a map?].

Or is that just me?

I never found that person.

Maybe I needed to realize that I am that person.

The realization that God speaks to us through our own thoughts, in our own hearts, was a game changer for me.  I had been waiting for signs or an outside voice, when all along he speaks to me inside of me.  Learning to recognize and act on these promptings changes everything.

Quiet is teaching me to pay attention. To recognize what these messages sound and look like.  To learn to trust them.  To trust God.  To learn to know and trust my heart.  I happen to believe that this is the way that God speaks to us, but I’m hesitant to declare that these messages are from God.  It seems presumptuous.  Maybe we can tell because of the way that they transform us?  Are they leading us eventually to peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, love, and self-control?  Yes?  Then maybe that was a Message and not just delusional thinking.

Quiet is helping me to sort through the messages swarming through my head.  I am better able to recognize the messages of fear and self-pity.  I am starting to identify the messages from Should and They.  I try not to pay attention to them anymore.  I still don’t know what exactly I am supposed to do when I grow up.  I still struggle with discerning my way forward.  But I am hopeful.  I trust that if I keep listening, I’ll find my way, one whisper at a time.