Just shut up, shut up

You know those people who are real blabber-mouths? Of course you do, you know, the ones who are always talking and you have to do a lot of nodding and make a lot of listening noises and you can hardly get a word in even when they ask you questions because the only time they are even asking you questions is only so that they can just talk about themselves some more?

In my relationship with God, that person is me. I can't believe that I never really thought about it before, I mean I've obviously heard people talk about "listening to God" and having a "conversation" with God, but I never really realized that when I'm praying it's really all me, all the time, goinggoinggoing, just trying to fill the space and if I can't think of something to say I just find something to say so there's no awkward silence between God and I.

Remember how I said that God is teaching me about how our relationship should look a lot like my realtionship with my husband? What if all I ever did when I talked to Peter was just go on and on about things and thanked him for a bunch of stuff really quickly and asked him for help with things and then just said, "okay goodbye!" and got up and walked away?

"Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating."

- Joel [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]

The wierd thing about God is that he actually does things for us even though we talk to Him like that. I can't imagine me talking to Peter like that and listing off a bunch of things that I'd like him to do for me and then just having him do them without even being able to say a word to me. (Although sometimes wouldn't it be flippin' sweet?)

Tonight at Journey, our weekly youth night, we watched the Rob Bell DVD called 'Noise'. One thing that really stuck out to me was all the passages that talked about "being silent" before God. Bell goes on to talk about how hard it is to be silent and how we are surrounded by so much audible and visible noise. I realized that I do get pretty uncomfortable with silence. I think we are all just so used to things beeping at us and talking to us and buzzing around in our ears that we don't know how to handle silence. I have to have the TV on when I am at home alone, even if I'm not watching it, or some music, or else I feel like the day just can't go on. I can hardly even meditate, I can't shut my brain off, it's going from one place to the next. I'm going to start working towards changing that. I'm going to start being a little quieter, a little more attentive, and "talk" with God like I'm actually in a relationship with Him.