Silence

I need silence.

Not the silence of others, although that is often welcome in this bustling, almost-never-quiet house.

I need MY silence. I need a respite from my own voice. I need to stop my natural bent to verbally process, direct, answer, explain, vent, intervene, discuss, obsess, or fix something with speech.

In this season, I have been struggling to hear the Lord’s voice. Well, maybe that isn’t quite what I mean. He IS speaking, and I AM hearing. It’s just that I need so much more of His voice than ever before. I am starved for His words, and I need so badly to hear Him at a deeper and deeper level.

It reminds me of when I was dating my husband, and he was away for the summer break. We talked on the phone once a week for an hour (old-fashioned land line and long distance rates on a college student budget), and we wrote letters. We were in touch, communicating, but I really wanted moment-by-moment words with him. I wanted him right there in the room with me to talk every day.

It’s a little like that right now with Abba & Y’shua & the Spirit. We are talking, but I need more.

Almost 2 years ago, He spoke something to me that seems to be coming to pass now.

I saw a mental picture of Alice falling down the rabbit hole…falling and falling…wondering what was happening and thinking, “This is so very strange!” Then in my mind I heard the lyrics of a song I know although one word was tweaked just a bit, All of this is strange and untrue and I won’t last a minute without you. 

I knew a time was coming when I would need Him in a way I had not before. I would need Him to guide me with His eye, with His whisper just behind me. I knew I needed to attune my ears more carefully. But somehow, I still wasn’t prepared for this season of so many voices, this season of deep need, this season of the strange and untrue.

 

Oh, how I pray it is a season, temporary and soon to change. I pray it is not a new country that we’ve moved to. (I am only camping here; I am not unpacking my furniture, right?)

I have never been at such a loss for how to respond to person as I am with my youngest and chosen child. There are no simple interactions with him. Everything means something it doesn’t mean, and what he wants he doesn’t want. Everything we say and do is twisted in his mind to mean rejection. His interactions are crafted by his brain to recreate the familiar unhealth he’s always experienced. And the traumas we only guessed at before? Some of them we now know with certainty, and I stagger under the weight of them.

And the voices swirl like a churning sea….voices from the adoption community, and theraputic parenting models and attachment theory and all the books I’ve read, and the voices of my past parenting experiences and the voices of each child in my home and of my husband and of my own wounds and fears. And above all, there is the controlling, fearful, rejected, victimized voice of this child…..wailing at me, demanding for me to STOP THE PAIN.

And the only Voice I really can’t hear with clarity above the din is the still, small One that I know I can trust.

I can’t silence all the other voices, but I can silence my own.

If I could stop speaking, perhaps I could learn to listen from a deeper, quieter space to that Voice I know is speaking in every moment. Perhaps I could quiet my own soul’s clamour, and lean into another Sound.

For years I’ve had the idea of a fast from speech. I tried it one day about 5 years ago. It was hard. But I think I was on the right track.

Just recently a friend of mine was given the strict prescription of 100% vocal rest from her doctor because of growths on her vocal chords. Strangely, I found myself wishing (almost) that is was MY prescription. I hesitate to write it because I don’t want to diminish her agony over this or take lightly what she is doing. The self-discipline is beyond difficult and the cost to those who must help her is humbling.

And yet, I felt a spark of desire, longing. It told me something. I need silence.

And a thought occurred to me. Perhaps I could do this, too, in diluted form. And I felt hope spring up. This could be a way to recalibrate something in myself that has long been out of alignment.

One day, each week, given over to the healing of silence: could I do that?

Would one day a week be enough to plant seeds that would take root and produce a harvest?

Could a discipline of finding silence like an island in the midst of a swirling sea of voices finally bring me to the place of peace that passes understanding?

This experiment might seem silly and cumbersome. It might not work. My husband might think I am crazy (although probably not since he’s lived with me for 21 years). It might look like I’m an overly-emotional, flailing woman, trying any fanatically weird experiment to get her life under control.

Oh, well. I think I’m going to risk it.