I AM NOT LISTENING AT ALL!

I LIFE IN GRACE SERIES I

After talking to my counselor today, I can’t help but notice how could she have this really big heart to see what is going on in the person’s thoughts and feelings. I notice her perspective of what the person is going through is very far from how I look at the situation. When she talks about how the person might be feeling, it is so deep like she is the ambassador of someone’s emotions. Many times, I think this is already a bad behavior and dangerous path to her it is an expression of what is going on inside their mind.

People going through tough times find comfort and support in her presence.

WHAT SHE DOES NATURALLY WAS JUST TOO DEEP AND TOO HIGH FOR ME TO GRASP.

Honestly, I don’t connect with how she sees people, and how she sees them is so beautiful. So I tried to question what is going through inside me. I prayed for God to illumine me. I don’t like how I look at myself in front of people who are hurting, struggling, and going through tough times. I want to listen and hear what is going on inside them.

I do not see and hear what they are feeling inside. What I see and hear is myself, with all the good intentions I have. I see them with the things they are supposed to do in the situation. I see them in the solutions I can provide for what they are going through inside them. So if a line or an understanding is not right in my hearing the correction button powers up.

What happens in my correction mode is that it’s not necessarily about their welfare or their issues but it’s my issues, it’s all about what I think is right for them more than where they are at, at the moment. So I realized most of the time, it’s about what I feel about them not really what they are going through inside them.

As I face brokenness in people, it is actually about me wanting to control the amount of damage and stress. I am controlling the stress and the damage because of course who wants stress. It is me feeling like what I think is always right and I have the perfect solution. I do not consciously feel this every time but this is how my actions are implying on a deeper level. A co-dependent control of the situation, being the hero of the problem and solving the problem for them. This points to the deep of brokenness inside me too. This is me a human playing like a god in my sphere of control.

Broken people needed support and comfort, not solutions. Hurting people need people who can navigate the pain with them and allow them to grow in the pain, not outside the pain. People needed people who listen and who understand. People who will empathize and see them in the right light with their brokenness.

Understanding means you are not there to provide solutions or give your opinion, it is only God who has the solutions. Your ideas are not necessarily coming from God even if it is good or right. God will use us to provide comfort as someone who will understand but not control the solutions and answers.

The person in pain needed to be able to find herself in the pain not necessarily the solutions. This is where our care and understanding are significant because the more the person feels loved, supported, and cared for in her pain, HEALING COMES IN.

God's plan is for our presence to be healing not to be fixers.

Empathy is healing.

Silence is healing.

Discussions with them are healing.

Talking out the problem is healing.

So as we encounter pain in many forms in people we get in contact with, it is not about controlling them (even with your pure intentions) by dictating to them on how they should feel about their situations but hearing them and seeing them in how they see themselves are. This is hard but we are to fit into their reality not make them fit our reality.

This is the best we can do and that will do good to the heart that is truly hurting and processing pain.

It hit on me that many times in life it is not about fixing what is broken. There are times that things just needed to be broken, they just needed to bleed, crack, or shatter into pieces because it is where newness comes.

We may not like the pain inside us and other people. Pain is a hard emotion to navigate so our instinct is it is bad so don’t we ever dare make the mistake of going there. But we live in a sinful world. No matter how we make things perfect pain and its reality will continue to haunt us and visit us in any form.

People in pain need not control pain, they are to stay. They are not to medicate, they are to stay. They are not to escape, they are to stay. By staying they see the reality of pain, they see how it works within, and they see how it destroys and eats them up if they don’t face it.

People needed people to face their pain.

People who care but are not pain managers.

People who care but are not fixers.

People who care but not controlling.

People who care and who will hold on and stay in their pain

People who care and who will have the strength to see their ugliness in their pain.

People who care and who treat them without judgment in their pain.

This blog post is a big part of my growth in Grace.

Every day is a learning curve to understand the heart of God for humanity.

Grace is seeing people who they are and staying with them.

I received this grace and to function in this grace, I thought it is like magic.

My control and my playing as knowing it all is coming from my humanity.

All heroin in me is functioning in controlling pain because I am really like this.

I thought this is already gone because I met Jesus.

I thought new life in Jesus is "meet Him and fix me all"

I am a rigid person and this has been my normal button before I met Jesus, and I thought I was changed.

But here I learned that Yes! God has given me a new life.

God has given me this consciousness now of who I am.

I am human, I am sinful, and my journey of discovering my humanity will be here in this sinful world. But the good news is that Jesus has my heart and it is easy for Him to gain access and guide me through the healing journey.

I am choosing to hear not because I want to be right with God but because I am hurt seeing people’s hearts and I see the need for comfort and care in people's pain.

I am not choosing to listen not because I want to earn God’s favor and blessings but because I see the value of the hurting around me.

The motivation is not anymore to bring God to me but to function in the image God has set in my identity. I am made to love and care. I may function as a fixer at times but God will remind me that I am made to love and care and He takes care of the fixing.

To function in grace is a real moment-by-moment journey.

To function in grace is not an automatic mode.

To function in grace is a journey.

However, in the journey, you are secured that you are not abandoned every time you fail.

In the journey, you are secured that every day is a new day.

God embraces our humanity and when He is in the temple of our hearts, He will do everything to bring us back to our real identity.