Yesterday one of my sisters, met her in the university, asked me, "Don't you feel bored and frustrated by all the venting that I keep doing all the time? I keep reaching out to you all the time when life hits me hard, when I am confused, when I need a way out. I always reach out despite not knowing what you might be going through." She continued, "I think at times, you have your own problems, your own struggles, but still you choose to listen to me, direct me the right way and support me."
Before answering her question, I paused for a second. I reminded myself why I am the way I am. I took a pause and continued.
"LISTEN. I know how it feels when you are not listened to. I know the feeling of being alone when you have a lot to vent out. I know that feeling. I have felt it. I have seen it. Life is not always the same for everyone, you have someone to lean on, to share things. Somewhere in the dark, they are alone, hopeless, no one is around. So, I am just the light that you asked for maybe…"
Sometimes we ask God for something and then God answers our prayers and sends people into our life.
And I meant every word of it.
That silence, it does something to you.
It doesn't make you weaker. It makes you aware. It makes you sharp to the smallest shift in someone's voice when they say "I'm fine" but they're not. It makes you recognize the look in someone's eyes when they've been carrying something too heavy for too long. You start seeing people differently. Not for what they show you, but for what they're hiding.
And that's exactly why I listen.
Not because I'm strong. But because I remember what it felt like when I wasn't. I remember the nights I wished someone would just sit with me, not to fix anything, not to give advice, just to be there. To say, "I hear you. I see you. You're not making this up."
Nobody taught me this. Life did.
When you go through certain things alone, you either become the person who says, "I survived it, so should you." Or you become the person who says, "I survived it, and I don't want you to go through it the way I did." I chose the second. Every single time.
My sister asked me if I get frustrated. The truth? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I'm holding my own world together with the thinnest thread while someone is handing me theirs. Sometimes I listen to people's storms while mine is still raging. But here's what I've learned, when you help someone find their ground, something in you finds its ground too. There's a strange kind of healing that happens when you become someone else's safe place. You don't lose yourself in it. You find a version of yourself you didn't know existed.
People think being the listener is easy. That it's a passive thing. All you do is sit there and nod. But it's not. Listening is a choice you make every single day. It's choosing to hold space when your own space is cramped. It's choosing to show up for someone when the world didn't show up for you. It's choosing to be the answer to a prayer that someone whispered when they thought no one was paying attention.
And maybe that's the thing about God and the universe and however you want to name it, maybe the answer doesn't always come in the form you expect. Maybe it doesn't come as a miracle or a sudden windfall or a door swinging wide open. Maybe it comes as a person. A call at the right time. A conversation that shifts everything. A friend who sits in the mess with you and doesn't try to clean it up but just says, "Yeah. This is hard. And I'm here."
I don't know what I am to everyone. But I know what I choose to be.
And if that means I carry a little more, so be it. Because I know what it feels like to carry it all with no one around. And I refuse to let someone else feel that way if I can help it.
So no. I don't get bored. I don't get frustrated.
I get reminded.
Reminded of who I was, what I went through, and why I will never let someone sit in that darkness alone, not if I can be even a small flicker of light.
Because sometimes, that's all someone needs. Not a bonfire. Not a spotlight. Just a flicker. Just enough to know that the dark isn't forever.
And maybe, just maybe, that's exactly why God put us in each other's lives.
