What Is Your Life Asking of You?

There are moments in life when a question begins to follow us.

It may not arrive as a crisis.

Sometimes it is quieter than that.

A restlessness.

A longing.

A sense that something no longer fits.

A recurring thought that won't quite leave.

A desire you can't fully explain.

A feeling that the life you're living and the life you want to live are beginning to move apart.

Often, our first instinct is to do something about it.

Make a decision.

Change jobs.

End the relationship.

Start something new.

Get busier.

Find an answer.

But what if the first thing we need to do is something different?

What if we need to pay attention?

I've become increasingly interested in the difference between solving a problem and discerning a life.

Problems often call for solutions.

Life is rarely so straightforward.

There are seasons when we don't need to know exactly what to do. We need to become attentive enough to recognize what is emerging.

This is one of the things I appreciate most about spiritual direction.

Spiritual direction isn't primarily about helping someone make the right decision.

It is about creating enough space to listen.

To listen beneath the noise.

Beneath our expectations.

Beneath the voices telling us who we should be.

Beneath the fear of making the wrong choice.

When I sit with someone, I am often struck by how much they already know.

Not necessarily consciously.

But somewhere beneath the explanations and competing voices, there is often a deeper knowing.

The challenge is that we rarely give it enough room to speak.

We live in a culture that prizes decisiveness.

Know what you want.

Set your goals.

Make a plan.

Move forward.

There is wisdom in all of this.

But there is another kind of wisdom that requires something different.

Patience.

Attention.

Silence.

The willingness to remain with a question without immediately resolving it.

I've learned this from my work as a hospital chaplain.

When someone is facing a serious illness, there are often questions that simply cannot be answered.

How long do I have?

Why is this happening?

What will happen to my family?

What does my life mean now?

There is a temptation, especially in healthcare, to move quickly toward answers.

Sometimes answers are exactly what we need.

But sometimes what a person needs most is someone willing to sit beside them in the question.

Not because the question doesn't matter.

Because it matters so much.

I think the same is true in ordinary life.

There are questions we cannot—and perhaps should not—answer too quickly.

Who am I becoming?

What do I really want?

What matters enough to give my life to?

What am I being invited to let go of?

What am I afraid to become?

What is this season of my life asking of me?

These questions don't always produce immediate clarity.

But asking them changes the way we inhabit our lives.

We begin to notice.

And noticing can become a form of discernment.

Perhaps that is why some of the most important changes in our lives begin so quietly.

A conversation.

A book.

A moment of beauty.

A persistent longing.

A growing discomfort.

A realization that something we once wanted no longer feels like ours.

At first, we may not know what any of it means.

We simply notice.

Then we notice again.

And eventually, if we remain attentive, a pattern begins to emerge.

This is not always dramatic.

Sometimes discernment looks less like receiving an answer and more like becoming increasingly unable to ignore what we already know.

The life beneath the life begins to speak.

And we have a choice.

We can drown it out.

Or we can listen.

I don't think paying attention means following every feeling or treating every desire as a divine message.

Discernment requires wisdom.

It requires testing.

It requires conversation.

It requires time.

But it begins with attention.

Before asking, "What should I do?"

Perhaps we can begin with:

"What is happening here?"

Before asking, "What is the right answer?"

Perhaps:

"What is this experience revealing?"

And before asking, "Where should I go?"

Perhaps:

"What is my life asking of me right now?"

I don't know that we are ever finished becoming.

There are always new seasons, new questions, new losses, new possibilities.

Perhaps a meaningful life isn't one in which we finally figure ourselves out.

Perhaps it is one in which we remain awake enough to keep listening.

To our lives.

To one another.

To the world around us.

And, for those of us who believe, to the quiet presence of God that may be speaking in ways we don't always recognize.