Please Listen

Please Listen

When I ask you to listen to me 
and you start giving me 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 problem, 
you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen! 
All I ask is that you listen. 
Don’t talk or do – just hear me.
Advice is cheap – 20 cents will get you both 
Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper. 
And I can do for myself; I am 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 inadequacy. 
But when you accept as a simple fact 
that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, 
then I can stop trying to convince you 
and get about this 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 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.
God just listens and lets you work it out for yourself.

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

Author Unknown