A word about,… Unheard.

I had a sad conversation a few days ago. I talked with someone who told me about their life and, in so many words, described what I would call a very lonely place. A woman who loved her husband and family was confronted with a variety of difficult circumstances and issues. Challenges that were so difficult to manage, feelings that were raw, relentless, and real. When I asked her who else knew about her feelings about life, she said she told her husband about how she felt. She had a very close Christian friend that she’d confided in, but she said, in all honesty, I don’t feel heard. It’s as if I say the words, but then the people that I’ve told don’t react as if I’ve actually said anything that they understand. For example, my husband says he understands, but then he doesn’t do anything that makes me feel like he heard me. He doesn’t change. I come away feeling unheard. I asked the woman what the difference was between not being heard and the person I’m talking to not doing what I think they should do in response to what I’ve said. She sat quietly for several seconds and then she said, Hmm, that’s a good question. It may be that my husband heard me, he just doesn’t do what I want him to do. And then she chuckled, maybe I’m heard, I’m just not paid attention to. I don’t think there is a lonelier feeling in the world than the feeling that I’m not being heard. In the first place, for me at least, working up the courage to express what I sense is going on in my life isn’t that easy for me. Being vulnerable and exposed to another person’s opinion demands a lot from a person. And of course, sometimes I’m not even sure what I feel anyway. If I disclose my hidden thoughts to someone else, I open myself up to not only examination but criticism or correction. The only remedy to that is silence. And if I’m silent, well, I have no one to blame for my feeling unheard except me. If I’m talking to someone else and I’m expressing what I think they should be doing, and then they act as if they haven’t heard me, it may very well be that they heard me perfectly. They just don’t intend to comply. That reality can be extremely frustrating and yes, even lonely. I have been known to have conversations with God where I come away feeling unheard. But there’s an enormous difference between unanswered and unheard. There’s probably no better example of that reality in all the world than in the scriptures. The Bible contains unanswered requests, delayed requests, altered requests, and yes, even denied requests. But for the child of God, unheard request is you might say unheard of. That’s the one category of request that positively does not exist. There is the confidence that we have toward him, says 1 John 5.14, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. There’s never a question in my life about whether God hears me. The great question is, as Adam of old must have known, can I hear him as he walks through the garden of my life? In many of my circumstances I have become aware that I’m expecting God to start answering my prayer before he’s finished listening to my truest need. A haunting thought that I pray never becomes a reality in my life. I wonder if God ever feels unheard by me. One of my life verses is Psalm 27, 8. In the New Living Translation, it reads, My heart has heard you say, Come and talk with me. And my heart responds, Lord, I am coming. May the God I love and serve never know a moment of being unheard.