Silence and Accusation

Every single day, Elijah Isus Johnson wants to eat the following for breakfast:

One banana with peanut butter

2 eggs

a bowl of buckwheat grits or rice

an 8-oz glass of warm milk (after he has finished his 8-oz glass of water because otherwise he won’t drink the water which he REALLY needs for various health reasons I won’t list here).

99% of the time this is what he gets for breakfast. There have been a few occasions when I was out of something. Today was one of them.

After handing him his banana, I opened the peanut butter jar to find it empty. The pantry did not contain a new jar waiting in the wings. I braced myself for the onslaught of his accusing words, hate-filled glare and demand that I get some peanut butter. It didn’t come. He just looked surprised. I instantly began to pour milk: my good-faith offering to say that I knew he needed a little extra care to get over the peanut butter.

He took the banana and sat down. I started doing something else in the kitchen, and when the microwave stopped, I didn’t immediately remove the warmed milk and take it to him. A few seconds went by. He came into the kitchen and said, “Can I have my milk, please?” What in the world could be wrong with that?

Ah, but tone is everything. His words dripped with coded meaning. His tone was condescending and demanding. He was saying “What is wrong with you? You are not taking care of me. Why was my milk not served to me immediately?” His eyes and expression matched the tone. Accusing. I encounter this tone daily.

When Elijah began to reproach me with his, you-are-not-loving-me-enough attitude, I didn’t open my mouth because this is a silent day, and I am not speaking. Normally, I would have defended myself and instructed him in the way to communicate his feelings appropriately. But today I was silent. I chose the easy way and simply got him the milk. I walked outside to take care of the trash bins. I was fuming inside. I heard these words:

Like a lamb before the shearer, he was silent before his accusers. (Isaiah 53:7)

What is HE teaching me through this maddening child? This eye-rolling, sassy boy who has mistaken me for his slave. He is teaching me that I do not need to defend myself. That He will vindicate me. I am bearing reproach for the abandonment this child experienced for 10 years. I am giving him more than any mother or mother-figure has ever given him, yet I am accused for all of their shortcomings. I am condemned for not doing everything he wants, how he wants, when he wants.

 I am forced to repay what I did not steal. (Psalm 69:4)

Not forced, really, but hemmed in. I do have a choice, but the choice not to do this is no choice I want. It’s the lesser of two evils: Reject this wounded child (NO!) or bear his wounds. I don’t really want to bear those wounds, because sometimes I feel as empty as that peanut butter jar. But, well, if those are the two options, I guess I will pick the latter one.

And as for teaching him how to treat me? Yes, this I must do. Yet, I cannot do it rightly when I am offended, angry, defensive. I must be willing to simply give the milk. Or I must be willing to be un-offended as I withhold the milk and invite him to ask in a way that allows me to give what he’s asked for. It sounds simple to my mind, but in the rage of being treated as nothing more than a means to an end, it is very, very complex. And hard. Don’t forget just plain hard.

The silence is a tool to move me further along this road of humility. It is a check to my reaction that allows me to choose a better response. Hearing is happening.

The Silent Experiment

Yesterday was the second time I’ve put words away for a day. I’ve taken some notes, knowing I would write about this, but none of them seem to fit together to mean much. It’s still kind of sketchy, but for those of you wondering, here goes:

All of our kids were on-board, thinking it was a novel idea…sign language, using a white board, pantomime…what could be more fun? My oldest son even joined in and used a white board to tell me a joke! My youngest son wasn’t opposed; he just didn’t get it. He was completely bewildered.

For starters, I noticed that my silence made everything calmer. (Ugh. Hard to admit.) I felt calmer, and it translated to the rest of the house.

While my healthy-adult-self is a responder, one who sees needs and meets them,

my unhealthy-not-so-adult-self is a reactor, one who feels the need to control anything that looks out of control (a kid making a mess, an argument between siblings, a child not on-task with school work during school hours).

Silence “forced” or allowed me to slow down to the place of responding instead of reacting. I felt much more powerful and in control of MYSELF, and my older kids sensed the difference.

The effect on Elijah is not clear yet. He was just as argumentative, disrespectful, and uncooperative as usual. However, I am often drawn into some sort of argument with him. Those don’t start out looking like arguments, but more like a verbal defending of a boundary. Yet, at the end of them, I am usually chiding myself for letting him draw me into his drama. But on my day of silence, there was no conversation. I just kept the boundary without discussion, and that was helpful. I am learning, slowly, how to give his “craziness” less and less room in my life as I try to give him healthy love.

Already, I am seeing that I actually LOVE the silent days. It is refreshing to find myself “unable” to try to fix, prompt, intervene, discuss, lecture (sigh), reason with or explain. And the truth is, I can still do this if necessary. I just have to condense, streamline, and share responsibility much more since I communicate in writing. I think it is healthier than the way I normally function.

So, while I love it, if I had to do it for days on end, I am sure I would not feel this way. My friend who is on doctor-ordered complete vocal rest for 6 weeks, has written that one of the negative effects of not speaking is feeling disengaged from those around her. I can attest to the truth of this. Even in one day, I can feel the disengagement. I am trying to take moments throughout the silent days to really look each child in the eyes and smile, give an extra kiss, hug or sign language “I love you.” Yet, when you have a tendency to be over-engaged, even enmeshed, with your children, a little disengagement can be healthy.

So far, I think the experiment is beneficial. I can’t say, yet, that it has allowed me to hear God more, but that may still be coming. I don’t know all of the results yet, of course, but I think a day of silence each week is going to become a more permanent part of my life.

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.