I Listen And That Is Not A Skill

It happens to you constantly and you have never once counted it.

Somebody starts a conversation with you about nothing. Twenty minutes later they are telling you a thing they have not said to anybody, and they usually finish by saying they do not know why they told you that.

And you go home and it does not occur to you that anything happened, because from the inside all you did was sit there.

That is the thing I want to look at, because sitting there is not what happened.

You are doing something rare and not something passive, and listening well has never once been the same as simply being available.

There are about four things you do that you have never named, and I am going to name them, because a person cannot offer a thing she cannot describe.

You do not fill silences. Most people cannot bear three seconds of quiet and you can sit in twenty.

You do not redirect. When somebody says a hard thing, the ordinary instinct is to say me too and tell your own version, and you do not do that.

You ask the second question. Most people ask one question and then move on. You ask the one after it, which is where the actual thing is.

And you do not fix. You have almost no impulse to solve it, which is why people keep talking instead of getting defensive.

Counsel in the heart is like deep water

There is a proverb about this exact capability, and it is not describing a personality.

Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out. (Proverbs 20:5, King James Version)

Like deep water, and a man of understanding will draw it out.

That is two people and a piece of work. The thing is down there, out of reach, and there is a person who can bring it up, and the verse credits that person with understanding.

You are named in a verse that treats drawing something out as work and not as temperament, and the bringing up of a thing has never once been the passive half of a conversation. Proverbs 20:5 says a man of understanding will draw it out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put a verb in the hands of the listener.

And look at what the verse assumes about the person talking. Their counsel is deep water. It is in there and it will stay in there.

Which means the thing that comes out in front of you was not going to come out anywhere else.

You have been the place where things came up that had nowhere else to go, and an hour that felt like nothing to you has never once been nothing to the person who had it. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that kind of room, and it is written in Proverbs 20:5 that deep water needs somebody to draw it.

Why it does not feel like a skill

Let me explain the reason this has stayed invisible, because it is a good reason and not a failing.

Skills that involve doing feel like skills. There is an object at the end, or a result, or a before and after. Listening leaves nothing behind that anybody can point at, including you.

And it costs you almost nothing, because you like it, and things a person likes doing do not get counted.

You are discounting it on the grounds that it comes easily, and ease has never once been evidence that a thing is common. The written word calls it understanding rather than niceness, and the Spirit of God is the one who names a capability that leaves no object behind.

And there is a harder reason, and I will say it gently because it is true of a lot of women who do this.

Somewhere along the line, being the one who listens got filed under being agreeable. Under not taking up space. And a thing that is filed under not taking up space can never be offered as work, because offering it would be the opposite of what it is for.

You are holding a real capability underneath a habit of self effacement, and being the quiet one in a room has never once been the same as having nothing to offer. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a gift from a habit, and Proverbs 20:5 puts the listener on the side of the person with understanding.

Name the four things, and one person

So here is the assignment, and it needs more specificity than usual.

Say out loud the one thing you are genuinely good at, and name one person who needs it. Proverbs 20:5 calls the drawing out of deep water the work of understanding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a woman the words for what she has been doing for years.

And do not say I am a good listener. That sentence is so worn out that nobody hears it any more, including you.

Say what you actually do. I can sit with somebody for an hour and not rush them and not talk about myself, and at the end of it they have said the thing they came to say.

You are able to say the specific version instead of the tired version, and an accurate sentence has never once been harder to believe than a vague one. The Spirit of God works with what is actually there, and the written word describes an action rather than a disposition.

And then one person. Somebody within reach this week who is carrying something and has nowhere to put it down. An older neighbor. A woman at work who has gone quiet. Somebody's mother on a Thursday.

You have thought of somebody already, and the face that arrived first has never once been an accident to be talked out of. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings a person to mind, and it is written in Proverbs 20:5 that what is deep in somebody stays there until another person draws it.