Out

I must take my own pride out then I would have the humility to sit in silence and wait for God to speak.

Prayer Christ in the Desert (Vladimir Zagitov)

I have been thinking about how I interact with my children.

So often, as a mother, I find myself speaking, when instead I should be listening.  So often, I find myself filling the silences with my own opinions rather than listening to the opinions of others.

In our busy world and with a personality like mine, it is often very easy to clog up the space with lots of noise rather than the quiet silence that allows the thoughts or feelings of another to get involved.

Recently I was speaking to someone about one of my children who was giving me a particularly hard time.

And they said to me, sometimes the solution is not to add something in, but rather, to take something out.

And I have been thinking about that ever since.  You see, in the case with my child, I was so overwhelmed by the issue at hand that I was trying to throw everything at the problem – so to speak.  And perhaps what I was doing – unintentionally – was that I was adding fuel to the fire (so to speak).  And instead of leaving some space for a solution, I was instead overwhelming the situation with problems.

And I have been thinking about that today as I have been thinking about prayer.

After all, when I pray, I am speaking to my God.  And when I speak to Him, I am usually overwhelmed by a problem.  And when I am overwhelmed that is when I make decisions that result in me muttering away at God when I pray.  I do not stay quiet and sit with my problem and wait for Him to act.  Instead, I sort of panic and begin rattling off all the issues that I have stored up in my mind.

And there are so many times when I walk away from those sorts of prayers and consider myself in a state of spiritual dryness.  I cannot feel God’s presence in my heart and soul.  I cannot feel the hope that only a connection with God can provide.  And all this time I have been blaming God for that.  I have been pointing to Him and saying to Him and myself, God is trying me.  But now that I consider how much I am putting into my conversation with God, it occurs to me that I should be taking something out of it.

And today, it seems to me that the thing I should be taking out of this is MYSELF…

For, if I could only take myself out – or at least to take out the yabbering part of me – out of this relationship with God then I would be able to hear what He has to say.  In other words, if I were able to take my own pride out then I would have the humility to sit in silence and wait for God to speak.  After all, what is the point of prayer, if I spend all my time talking to myself – and NOT to my Beloved…?

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.