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Transcript

What If God Heard Me the First Time? · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: What if God heard me the first time?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: On unanswered prayers,
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: unexpected endings,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: and the possibility that I can trust what I cannot yet understand.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I heard a story about a man who spent 36 days lost in the Amazon rainforest
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: after his plane crashed.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Antonio Sena.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: For the first week, he stayed near the wreckage, hoping someone would find him.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, he realized he couldn't keep waiting and started walking.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It rained.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: He was hungry, exhausted, and alone.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: In the version of the story I heard, he kept asking God for one thing.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Please, make the rain stop.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it wouldn't stop.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Day after day, the rain kept falling.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was constantly wet, cold and exhausted.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the longer it went on, the harder it became to understand why God wasn't answering him.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why isn't God listening to me?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking for just one thing.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Please, make the rain stop.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine asking for the same thing every single day,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: for weeks, and feeling as though your prayers are going nowhere.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then, after more than 30 days alone in the forest,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: he finally encountered a group of people collecting Brazil nuts
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: who helped him get rescued.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: The story was told to me with one particular detail,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: that the rain had forced those people to take a different route,
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: bringing them to the very place where he found them.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been able to verify that detail, but the idea has stayed with me.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: What if the very thing we're asking God to take away is somehow part
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: of what will lead us somewhere else?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: A few days before I lost my job in June, I was on a flight back from Bucharest.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I remember looking out of the window, feeling this strange tightness in my chest.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Something about my professional life wasn't right.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't explain it, but I could feel it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I prayed.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Divine Universe, show me, guide me, use me.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm listening.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I am at your service.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was asking for guidance.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: A few days later, I lost my job.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I asked for guidance, not unemployment.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not months of interviews,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: applications, uncertainty, and waking up without knowing exactly what comes next.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, here I am.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Four months later,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: still looking for work,
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: still having conversations that may or may not lead somewhere.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: But also writing,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: recording a podcast,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: creating things,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: reading books,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: attending masterclasses,
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: exploring meditation and kundalini,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: and discovering interests I never imagined I'd have.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I wonder whether I would have found any of these things
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: if my life had continued exactly as it was.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Other times,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would quite happily exchange another lesson in personal growth for
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: a little financial certainty.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Both feelings are real.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when I heard the story of the pilot, I couldn't help thinking about my own reign.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent these months wanting something to happen,
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: wanting an answer,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: wanting to know whether all this effort,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: curiosity and learning are actually taking me somewhere.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what if something is happening that I simply cannot see yet?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your reign looks nothing like mine.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a relationship that ended,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: a country you moved to but still don't quite feel at home in,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: or a version of your life you worked so hard to build
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: that no longer feels like yours.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been asking for something to change for months and nothing has.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many of us are walking around convinced
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: that our prayers are going unanswered when the truth is
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: that we simply don't know what happens next.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether God or the universe had anything to do with my losing my job.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether everything happens for a reason or
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: whether we find reasons afterward because they help us make sense of what happened.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I want to believe there is something waiting on the other side of this period.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But wanting to believe something and knowing it are two very different things.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I keep remembering that prayer on the airplane.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Show me.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Guide me.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm listening.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I imagined guidance would arrive as an opportunity, an introduction, a door opening.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't considered what it would feel like if something closed first.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: when I look back one day,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll understand why these months unfolded the way they did.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps I'll simply be grateful for what I decided to do with them.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: For now, I don't have the answer.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still walking.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's still raining.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still praying for it to stop.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But lately, I've also been wondering where the rain might be taking me.