To Love is To Listen Well (My First Attempt to Write About Thailand And so Much More)

To love is to listen well. It’s a phrase I’ve been thinking on for several months. It’s a seed that has slowly grown in the soil of my mind into a flowering garden in my spirit.

To love is to listen well.

I’ve seen a lot of pain this year—personally, yes—but also in the church.

Mark Driscoll. Bill Gothard. Leadership Journal and the sex predator article. Scandal after scandal rocked Christendom this year as controversy after controversy awakened the fact that spiritual abuse and sexual abuse happen more frequently than we’d like to think.

Tensions ran high in Ferguson, MO, as African Americans pleaded with a country to hear their cries of injustice and intolerance. Minority voices broke out again and again to plead with the church to hear their stories, to help them achieve justice.

Women cried out that #YesAllWomen are affected by rape culture, sexism, and misogyny—even in hallowed places like the church. They told story after story of sexual harassment and abuse, filling the Internet with words of startling clarity as to how far our society still needs to come in the fight for equality.

This is only a snapshot of everything that went on this year. I work in publishing (in online marketing) and I’m in the thick of watching trending stories in the church and the world.

There is so much pain. For much of this year, I read story after story. I had no words, no meaningful voice to contribute to the conversation. I was overwhelmed by sorrow, anger, and despair that our world, our church, our families could ever change. What do I do, God? I asked. What do I do?

Again and again, the phrase kept rising in my mind.

To love is to listen well.

***

Then I traveled to Thailand and encountered profound darkness. An unhealthy cultural cycle that thrives on abuse, sexual exploitation, and broken families. My heart cried out within me. What do I do, God? I asked again and again. What do I do?

And the answer came again: To love is to listen well.

So I listened.

Literally. All I did in Thailand was listen. I didn’t talk much, because it was all so overwhelmingly, amazingly hard and beautiful. I listened to the Spirit of God speaking to my soul as I prayed and prayed and prayed for strength to get through the trip. I listened to the founders of ministries, and I listened to former prostitutes tell their stories. I listened to my team members talking about media and nonprofits, and I listened to children laughing in broken English. I listened in coffee shops cold with AC and in the sweltering humidity of Southeast Asia. I listened in a five star restaurant, and I listened in a poverty-stricken village. I listened in run-down jeeps, vans, airplanes, motorbikes, hotels, and red-light districts.

I heard stories of violence, rape, coercion, and abuse that made my stomach turn. Yet I also heard stories of redemption and hope that caused me to ache with the beauty of this complex world.

I listened, and my heart changed.

So I’m convinced that if we all just listened, our world would change for the better. If we sat down with others we don’t understand or are afraid of, looked them in the eye, and listened, hearts would change. If we walked alongside the broken, the battered, the wounded and really listened to their pain, healing would come.

Because to listen is to see with the heart.

To really listen helps us empathize with what others are feeling, thinking, and seeing. To really listen helps us leave our own self-absorbed concerns and step inside someone else’s story.

To love is to listen well.

***

I invite you to really listen as I share about my trip to Thailand. I invite you to listen as I pour out what I saw, felt, and heard. I invite you to listen to my own heart as I continue down my own journey of brokenness, grief, healing. Because everything I saw in Thailand is intricately linked to my own healing journey. And it’s linked to yours as well.

So please—I ask you to sit down, read this blog, and listen over the coming months.

Because one thing I learned irrevocably on this trip: I love to listen because I am a Storyteller, and my deepest desire for this blog is share stories with you of beauty and light, hope and healing.

Yes, to love is to listen well. But then it’s to share what you’ve learned with the world so other hearts will change and heal, too.

Photo by Adobe Stock/keiferpix