At the height of my struggle with anxiety, I remember how pompous some people were. Okay, pompous is too strong of a word. They meant well. But I remember telling a few people I was struggling, and the first thing a few did was quote scripture back to me. Now don’t get me wrong, scripture is comforting. It is life-changing. But what I needed in those moments was not for someone to offer words of wisdom or to quote scripture I already knew. What I needed at that moment was for someone just to listen.

That’s the hard part. When you struggle and we scream out for help, it often feels like no one wants to listen. And even as I type this, I know that I as well suck at this. I suck at listening. When my wife was at the tip of dealing with hurt from toxic leaders in our church we were attending- I sucked at listening.

One of my goals this year is to offer less advice and try and listen when someone is hurting. Sometimes that is what people need more, and sometimes that is the last thing we think to offer.