Lead With Your Ears

“Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: LEAD WITH YOUR EARS, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger.”James 1:19-20 MSG

This week has been different in many ways. The level of grief that I sense and feel I can’t begin to describe. This grief has been stacking up for years, almost my entire life. As a child, I had night terrors that froze me and caused me not to be able to go back to sleep alone in my room. One of those terrorizing dreams that I would have REPEATEDLY was of a dark figure killing my brother. I remember waking up many nights just to see if my brother was BREATHING. I would watch his chest rise and fall until I was SURE he was still breathing. Many of those nights, my brother would wake up to put me in his bed while he slept in a chair. I believe that some of these dreams were sparked by the injustice I was watching my family live through with my brother and the high school he was attending. 

You see, he was the only black and his attempts to make friends and have a “normal” high school experience paled next to the other freshmen that were spitting on him and calling him cruel names. I have always had a nurturing and protective personality. But being 6 years younger than my brother, I didn’t have the words nor the power to protect him from those mean men. To make it worse, the leader of the teens spewing hatred at my brother, well, his dad worked with my mom, and all her attempts to speak with the “adult” fell on ears that had no desire to hear. After a year of that, we moved schools, I went to a new elementary school, and my brother found a new high school. 

Fast forward to Tuesday, May 26, 2020, and the video that the world has now seen of George Floyd being murdered.  As I heard him say, "I can’t breathe" time and time again, it unlocked torment from 33 years ago. I could see that being my nephews, brother, or even my father. Something inside of me broke, and I wept and have wept for days. I have found comfort in friends who have called to check on me and talking to my brother, sister-friends, and mainly to God. 

I have been in a Bible Study led by one of my sisters, we are studying James. And a couple of weeks ago, a verse stuck with me, and since then, I have been applying that action to my life. To lead with my ear, to listen, to hear what is being said. Often for me, I am quick and ready to solve the problem. But as I have lead with my ear, it is allowing me to hear God, to gain perspective on HOW and WHAT to pray. So before I try to just tell you what I think. I want to lead with my ear, to hear what God is saying, to hear my brothers saying they are TIRED. To hear their cries in words, they are writing and speaking. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say, it is simply that listening has taken priority over my need to speak words.