I pretended that made sense as he unloaded several years’ worth of wisdom gleaned from atheist websites and obscure publications. It clearly fascinated him but didn’t provide the answer to the single question I’d posed last session: What is your basis for determining right and wrong?
He was only in counseling, he informed me, to prove to his ex-girlfriend that he was trying to change. But the question stumped him. He tried giving a few answers, but shot them down himself. The atheistic opinions that had sounded so smart unchallenged online folded like dime-store umbrellas when they slammed into absolute truth. Half-way through our second session, he calmed down and looked at me: “Okay, I give up. How does anybody have a basis for right and wrong?”
Bingo. Now it was my turn. I had listened to him and now he was ready to listen to me. I usually know within the first ten minutes of a new client session what the problem is and what we need to do about it. But that’s not the time to say it. He needed to get it all out in the air and know that I had really heard him.
Learning to really hear other people is one of the greatest gifts we can offer them, but one which none of us is very good at without practice. Especially in this toxic climate, we’re all eager to jump in with our opinions but not as eager to listen to someone else. Because I was willing to listen to him, nonsensical as it was, he was willing to hear the answer to a question he’d never known he was asking.
His response surprised me. He decided the ex-girlfriend wasn’t worth pursuing after all, but Jesus was. He bowed his head and committed his life to Christ. “I’m afraid I won’t be any good at it,” he said. “I’m not a very good person.”
“None of us is,” I assured him. “But you can talk to Him just like you talked to me. He’ll listen and understand what your heart is saying.”
He gave me a half-grin. “Oh, okay. It’s like talking to you? I guess I can do that.”
I showed him how to use the Bible I gave him and he eagerly scheduled his next session, thanking me when he left. I watched him go, feeling a bit of motherly pride, and wondered: What if I hadn’t wanted to listen? What if I only cared about telling him where he was wrong and how to fix it?
What if we each trained ourselves to really listen to other people? What if we let them get it all out in the air before we jumped in with our ideas? How many broken lives might be mended, how many relationships restored if only we learned how to really listen?
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