You're here for the duration

Lord, I say to friends "you can talk to God and He will talk to you, just do it".  Some come back to me later and say, "I heard nothing, I got nothing, what am I doing wrong?".   It just isn't logical for me to keep saying this to them just because I've come to a stage where I can finally hear You.  I forgot how long it took for me to get here.  What was it?  20, 30, 40 years?  How long did I scramble trying to get answers from You when the question was weighty and important?  How long did I search for ways to get those answers?  Each search seemed to gain a tiny nugget of Truth that I carried into the next search as I continued onward, always seeking.  Each nugget gave me insight but didn't give me answers.  Some nuggets lead me to other searching that appeared to give me answers only later to discover that there were answers I thought were true which turned out to be my own musings.
It was difficult, Lord.  It was truly difficult.  As I look back on all those years and see me stumbling around in the dark like some blind woman with Tourette's it strikes me as comical on the one hand, bizarre on the other, and yet I begin to eek out a strange path that oddly pieces together intricately and uniquely personal to my own character.  Suddenly I am amazed by the genius pattern that emerges as I see Your hand in each stumble, each straying, halting step, and each misguided search. 
You let me wander on my own personal adventure completely unhampered by restrictions and yet never leaving my side for one moment while slipping steps in front of me that would eventually lead me to You.  I didn't always take them, but You kept slipping them in there.  One after another after another, each leading in a positive direction but completely my decision to chose each time and never condemning me or being insulted Yourself if I turned away from one and took the wrong step.  You only added another and another. 
Now here I stand before You able to hear Your voice, feel Your presence, and 'know' Your intentions in a way that I cannot put into words adequately enough to help another find this communication. I can't tell the secret because it was not my achievement.  It was Yours.  It was Your heart in response to my need to hear You.  It wouldn't die.  No matter how far off the mark my arrow shot; no matter how disappointing my 'near revelation'; after the tears fell again, I came one more time to the beginning stepping stone; the same one I visited over and over - named 'I need to hear God', and began again.  Except each time, I had another nugget of Truth in my repertoire of knowledge.  I hadn't a clue with to do with it, but I knew it would be important so I kept it.
Like the one I learned from witchcraft; the lie is hidden in the predominance of Truth.  What does one do with that nugget?  It is True and it is there somewhere but it doesn't help to find it the next time.  The only thing that helps to find it is to be able to hear from You.  Funny, how I needed to learn the pitfall before learning the solution.
I ache to tell the secret.  If only I knew a simpler way than the one I took.  What can I say?  "Chase your tail like I did for 40 years and if you still want to hear His voice, you'll get there"?  No.  That isn't always true, either.  I know people who learned to hear Your voice quickly.  They didn't have to chase anything.  Somehow they 'took' the right steps You laid in front of them and arrived quickly.
I shake my head it amazement and chuckle.  They are so far ahead of me.  Yet, are they?  Ha ha!  It isn't always what it seems to be.  There's another nugget of Truth. 
Oh, well.  I'm so overwhelmingly grateful and thankful that I can sit in Your presence.  Nothing, nothing, nothing can shake that away from me.  It's like granite.  Once it's placed, it would take an awfully large crane to move it; and if it's a big enough piece then there just isn't a crane big enough.
Like Easter Island.  Remember those statues?  We don't have anything in our modern world that can handle those babies.
That's what You are to me.  A statue on Easter Island.  You're here for the duration. 
Thank you.