By Kathy Loutrel, MD

Has anything like this ever happened to you: respond to an email that contained some personally sensitive information and find out weeks later that your email response was never received? Or you send an email with some personally important information and it never is read by the intended recipient? All of this because of a lost email.

Something like this just happened to me. It was with a close family member. All kinds of difficult feelings came up-feeling shunned and unimportant, shame, fear that my heart-felt message was taken in a way that strained the relationship, anger at being ignored, pain from an attempt to communicate love not being accepted, feeling wrongly accused for not communicating. Every time I thought of the other person, I would wonder what had happened and review and reinforce those uncomfortable feelings. The feelings came repeatedly, and got stronger.

Communication is so important, most especially in an ongoing relationship. When it is interrupted, I can, and often will, imagine lots of different things. Most of my thoughts often tend to be about how the other person feels about me. Not usually positive thoughts.

Does this happen in my relationship with God?

• Do I wonder if He heard me, or that my concerns (or I) matter to Him?
• Do I think that He won't answer my prayer?
• Do I even wonder if He's there?
• Do these thoughts take me to challenging emotions like fear, anger, pain, isolation?

I am so grateful that God's communication to me is never lost, just overlooked, ignored or wrong (a mistake). I may not have searched my "Inbox" (the written Word), or gone over it in haste to get to the next task. I may not have gotten alone with Him, turning my attention to Him fully. I may have read or listened to many others' thoughts about the issue, only to get confused. I may think I need the answer NOW, but He knows better.

His Word is written for me to read and His truth (Spirit) lives in me.

Have I spent time with the Lord, meditating on Scripture? Am I listening to His Spirit within me or am I stifling Him by crowding Him out? I need to search my Inbox. I must "Trust him and he will help, and be still in the presence of the LORD and wait patiently for him to act." Ps. 37: 5b, 7a (NLT). I must do so regularly so I don't miss what He is telling me or forget the Truth. The Truth that He loves me and wants me to know that.