I hear you God, loud and clear this time.

I'm not always good at listening to God's voice. Pushing away the static noises of life, small children, technology, day to day errands/chores, and truly listening for the nudges from God. Sometimes I hear the little nudges and respond accordingly, but sometimes I second guess myself later and wonder if I ignored a little voice asking me to do something because I was too caught up in my own stuff to listen.

I realized yesterday that God is putting forth a challenge for me. A big one. In general, I don't tend to hold grudges, I've always been a relatively forgiving person; but as I've gotten older I think it is sometimes harder for me to let go of the hurts done by others. Perhaps my chronically sleep deprived state the past 4+ years has made me more sensitive, less tolerant and sometimes too cranky to let go of slights.

There is a woman I know from church who gets under my skin. I actually started out as friends with her a few years back when we met, I initially thought she was one of the nicest people. But then I got to know her better and learned that we have very different philosophies on several things. However, one thing we both love is cooking. One day a year or so ago I shared a recipe with her that I thought she would enjoy. She posted my recipe on her fancy cooking blog and it got picked up by some bigger blog sharing thing. She was all over FB "Look! MY recipe won a blog award!" I clicked the link and was like...uh, that was my recipe. And not some recipe I copied from somewhere else, one of my original recipes I created from trial and error and melding different aspects of a few recipes I liked. I'm not a show off or a bragger and I have no problem sharing my recipes - but seriously, she could've at least thrown out a tiny bit of credit rather than claiming it was her own recipe. So yeah, that was the beginning of the end of our friendship. I've also grown really tired of the highly political and controversial articles she frequently posts on FB.

Last year when P5 was diagnosed with autism, I remember sitting in the circle at my mom's group letting my mind wander as I glanced around the room. I looked at that woman across from me, and I thought to myself, "She is the LAST person I would tell about P5 - I can just see her giving me a smug smile and saying some stupid platitude." Thinking back on this now I realize this is just my own insecurities coming through.

This year I volunteered to be a prayer captain in my mom's group, and our prayer groups were randomly assigned to us. That woman? She's in my prayer group. The first few weeks I found myself feeling quiet and not wanting to talk. Passing on sharing any prayer requests and also drawing back from leading the group. As an elder I've now been through multiple trainings and sessions on group prayer, and I have failed my prayer group by not stepping up to pray aloud for us. It's not something that everyone is comfortable with (even myself, I'm not always comfortable with it). I left my group meeting yesterday feeling irritated and annoyed, but when I got home and situated the kids into "quiet time" activities, I spent a little time praying. During my quiet time with God, I heard him nudging me to let go. To embrace this woman and to treat her as a friend. To pray for my group and to share what is on my heart so that they too will open up and share. I'm going to try next week and see what happens. I don't expect to become best friends with this woman, but maybe through this process other friendships will develop in my prayer group and our group will eventually be as deep and supportive as my old prayer group from last year was. (This has actually been really hard - knowing how awesome my old group was and now having a new, awkward and unfamiliar group). I'm not a patient person in nature, but I know I need to step back and give this time.

I truly believe that sometimes God has bigger, better plans. Remember 6 months back when I blogged about how we can't all be friends? That woman I mentioned whom I spilled the coffee on...turns out she is a really nice person. In fact, a very kind, generous and thoughtful person. As I got to know her a little better in the late spring she ended up being an amazing resource for one of my BFF's who's infant needed open heart surgery. She gave advice and talked my BFF through the process and even recommended an excellent surgeon out of state. My BFF took her advice and the surgery ended up going perfectly. I'm glad that I was able to open my heart to getting to know her so that I was able to connect her with my dear friend who was in a time of crisis in an area I had no experience in. I can't take all the credit though - really it was God who was there, giving tiny nudges to several people so that all of these connections could happen.