She was wrong for him. She was needy and would not fuel his dreams. I wasn't the only one who could see the disaster coming. A number of my friends could too. But John never asked me for advice. In fact, the clear signal he sent was, "This is what I'm going to do, so don't get in the way."

Years later, the relationship was claustrophobic and dysfunctional and fell apart.

I'm guessing you've been there too - how many times have you watched a friend's situation that felt to you like a slow motion train wreck?

You knew what your friend should do, but she wasn't open to your advice. So you sat there in silence and watched the inevitable catastrophe.

Your friend didn't know what she didn't know.

If only she could have asked you for counsel. If only she thought to ask you the question, "Am I missing anything?" Or, "Are there any questions I should be asking?"

This is a huge issue in discipling someone - do they know what they don't know? Do they want to grow enough to ask for help?

You see their blind spot, but you wonder about whether they trust you enough for you to bring it up. You have the discernment, but not the authority in their life. And so, they plow ahead, steering for the cliff that you can all too clearly see ahead.

A little humility goes a long way. If I had a do-over, I would have sought out people with answers to questions I needed to  be asking a lot earlier. And I would have said, "Here's my life, what do you see that I'm not seeing? What's the most important question I could ask now?"