CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATIONS

I am not naturally a good listener. But it is my hope that I can be helpful to people who need someone to listen to them, partly because I work hard to listen well, and partly because I work hard to be available to listen. I had two conversations today with people who greatly honored me by sharing their situations with me. I am honored because these people value me enough to seek me out for empathy and advice. And I am honored because these people trust me enough to share sensitive issues without betraying such information to others.

I obviously cannot and do not want to share the content of these two conversations. I do want to talk about the conversations themselves. Being a natural problem-solver, I have had to work hard -- against my nature -- to be more of what people seem to need more than solutions to problems. "I hear you." "That must be difficult." "It sounds like this is what you are saying." When people used to thank me after a conversation like that, I used to say (or at least think), "But I didn't do anything." But I did. I listened.

It is still difficult to do, just listen. Sometimes it's because I think I know "the answer," although I'm learning I usually don't, and even if I do it is sometimes wise to let people discover the answer on their own -- or even more often, they know the answer but it's not what they need in the moment. Sometimes it's a struggle for me because I don't know "the answer," and that feeling of helplessness is hard to reconcile with wanting so desperately to help. But I am learning to be patient with myself and with others, with God and with His process of bringing resolution to difficult situations.