I recently became a foster mom to two adorable kittens. When it became time to give them up, my heart broke inside. I found myself begging God for an answer. Can I really give them up? Can I keep one? For days I felt no direction, then after surrendering the babies for their spay and neuter surgery, I once again approached God in prayer still asking if I could reclaim one. This time, I felt a deep unexplainable peace. I felt for sure I knew what this meant. I went to the shelter after work in the hopes to claim one, but my babies were already adopted.
 
My heart broke and instantly I became very angry with God. I had already given them up once, but because I believed I had felt His direction, it now seemed I had lost them a second time. I blamed God for the peace He had given me, and internally yelled at Him on my way home. It hurt worse, because I felt betrayed by Him. I didn’t understand.
 
While God can certainly handle our anger, often these feelings against Him are misplaced, like mine were. If I had listened closer, I probably would have realized the peace He was giving me was strength to let them go or confidence that He had wonderful homes picked out for them. Even with His direction, I wasn’t really listening to what He was trying to tell me, but instead, was manipulating it to hear what I wanted to hear.
 
It is so easy to do this in our time of prayer, and like me, this often leads to anger at God. Why didn’t He answer a prayer the way we thought He would? While we can most certainly learn how to listen to God better, if we aren’t careful, the devil can sneak his words into our thoughts and convince us that it is God speaking. St. Faustina herself, when receiving visions of Jesus, was obedient to her spiritual director, trusting that if it wasn’t really Jesus speaking to her, he would help lead her away from these voices. If a spiritual visionary like St. Faustina is astute enough to recognize that even when we think it is Jesus talking to us, it may be our own voice instead, how much more confidence should this give us that we are not alone in this spiritual battle?
 
Elijah also teaches us in the Old Testament that God usually comes not in big grand gestures, but in the stillness and whispers around us. He waited through strong wind, an earthquake, fire, and yet it was in a low whisper that God revealed Himself to Elijah.
 
This isn’t meant to discourage us when we consider the difficulties in hearing God, but encourage. Our anger and frustration might not be at God Himself but at our inability to hear Him. And God is just waiting to help us! What does it take to hear Him? Quiet. Stillness. Both of these qualities are very difficult to find in the world today, but are essential for us to grow closer in our relationship with the Lord. Take time for daily prayer. Close your eyes, turn off the TV, hide in a closet if you have to, but practice listening to the silence rather than listening to your own thoughts. This is incredibly difficult and won’t happen in a day, but if we persevere, if we keep going forward, we will find God has been trying to speak with us all along.