Don Henley of the Eagles wrote a song during his solo career called "The Heart of the Matter." The refrain goes:

I've been trying to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness.

In my own experience this has proven to be hugely profound. Not necessarily (although usually) about forgiveness, but I have encountered my mind coming up against the heart of the matter, and then my will getting weak, and my thoughts scattering. Not to read my life into yours, but I'll say that when you said you didn't really know what the elders wanted, this syndrome flew to my mind. Because the elders are all pretty articulate, and, in your shoes, if I came out not knowing what they had said, it would be because my will had gotten weak and my thoughts had scattered.

The times this has happened to me were times that I had a really big bad issue with someone, and I came up against something I ought to do, that I had a lot of reasons not to do. You can see that forgiveness generally fits this profile, because generally we OUGHT to, and we always have reasons NOT to. If we didn't have reasons not to, forgiveness would not be an issue in the first place. It's when my mind falls into the crack between the "ought" and the "not" that this happens.

I hate saying this, because I am condemning myself, and I don't like to do this. But I think that when this does happen, it's because at some level I agree with the "ought" to, and the "not to" reasons have to do with pride and sin and the principle of the thing and other items that Christ thankfully has never used on me. And I twirl around in the self-justifying cesspool desperately trying to avoid the humiliation and unfairness of the thing I know I should do. It sucks.

When my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter, I think something is telling me I'm supposed to change something.