"P" as in Paul?

I answer the phones at work, and most of the time I am able to transfer the callers without too much interaction with them. Once they spit out the person they want to talk to or the issue they want to discuss, I whisk them off to the proper person without too much fuss.

This morning I have been praying for friendly callers, because I also get to field all of the angry callers that want to complain about this or that. Thus far I have had the friendliest callers I could imagine. Most of them still want to complain, but they have all admitted that they understand that it is not my fault and just want to let someone know that they are unhappy.

The phone call that has made my day was an older woman that called to place an event on our calendar. It was clear from the beginning of the conversation that she was a sweet elderly church secretary. And having had a lot of experience with older church ladies, I immediately had compassion for her.

I was trying to explain that she needed to visit our website at www.the...........com/calendar.

At that she stopped me and said "So it's www. ............com?"

"Nope you have to put the word 'the' in the beginning." I lovingly corrected. I knew she didn't get it though, due to the long pause after that. It was like I could hear the wheels in her brain turning, trying so hard to connect what I was saying and failing miserably!

"I'm sorry hunny. I still didn't understand that word before ........com."

"THE" I said with a little more clarity and a little louder.

"Can you spell it hunny? I'm still not getting it."

"T-H-E"

"P as in Paul?"

"No. T as in Tom"

She giggled and said "I still didn't get that"

At this point I was dying laughing, not at her, but with her.

Somewhere amid the confusion and laughter, it clicked and she started laughing even harder. "Oh, THE. T-H-E. I got it!"

That phone call immediately reminded me of a conversation I had with God on my way to work this morning. I prayed that God would make things clearer and would help me know what He was trying to say to me more easily. But this sweet lady taught me that sometimes it is not a bad thing to get confirmation about what you hear. If she had not double checked what she thought she heard, she would have ended up at www.phe...........com/calendar, instead of www.the.............com/calendar, which would not have done either of us any good!

I believe God wants us to listen to His voice and then make sure that what we think we heard was actually what He was trying to tell us. It is easy for us to confuse His voice with our own thoughts or other voices that may pop up, but He wants us to verify and then act on what He said.