When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice, you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problems, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I asked was that you listen. Not talk or do- just hear me. Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get you dear Abbey and Billy Graham in the same newspaper, and I can do that for myself - I'm not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and weakness.

But when you accept as a simple fact, that I do feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince you and get about the business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling. And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice. Irrational feelings make more sense when we understand what's behind them.

Perhaps that's why prayer works, sometimes, for some people, because God is mute, and He doesn't give advice or try to fix things. He just listens and lets you work it out for yourself.

So please, just listen and hear me, and if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn, and then I'll listen to you.

Anonymous
(Submitted by Tom Buie - 22 August 1997)