A missionary and You Were Made for This listener texted me recently.

“Did you ever hit times where you were tired of ‘worrying about your kids? I’m at that point this morning.”

I responded with “Sometimes its hard to turn off the worry, isn’t it?”

The listener wrote back: “Yes it is. Thank you for not saying ‘JUST pray about it'☺️.”

Yikes. They must have heard this before and it didn’t go well. I could easily have irritated this listener with advice like JUST pray about it. I’ve done so before. The advice could be a good response in a different situation. But certainly not this one. At this time.

I can smell the pungent odor of JUST that I think so bothered the listener. JUST pray about it can come across as:

Your problem is a simple one. How come you can’t figure out what to do?

I thought you were smarter than this.

I don’t want to get involved with what you’re going through.

Can’t we talk about something else?

I want to fix your problem, but I don’t know how

I’m not thrilled with my response, either. I wish I would have responded more to the “tired” that the listener expressed. I think that might have been more of the issue. But I missed it. And so I learn from my listening mistakes.

How about you?

What listening mistakes have you learned from?

I’d love to hear about them. We can all learn from each other.

John

P.S. Only 14 more days until the start of season two of You Were Made for This. Get your party clothes ready!