DEAFENING SILENCE

As I sit to write the house is quiet. The boys are at school and my husband is at work. The only sound I hear is of an occasional passing car.

As most any mother who stays home with her children can relate there was a time I longed for this moment. I dreamed of what it would feel like. Well, it has arrived and now I know. After seven and a half years of having little ones underfoot day in and day out the silence has finally arrived. How can silence can feel so deafening?

How quickly I mourn the loss of this time and not only that, I mourn the loss of what wasn't...what I wasn't. Much like words, time, cannot be taken back. Once released they are gone - never to return.

When you see a package marked fragile do you hold it a little closer and a bit tighter? I do too. How can it be that something as fragile as time is treated with so little care?

When all is quiet and still my mind goes into overdrive. Perhaps this is why so many drown out the silence with noise. For the first 5 years as a mother my thoughts tormented me. I "knew" Jesus was the way and I "knew" much about what the Bible said but in reality what did that really look like? Others would come along and tell me the way but it didn't seem to be working for me. Perhaps they weren't hurting and struggling as I was or perhaps they were just pretending too.

I am learning that it is in the still that God's whisper can often be heard. It is good to face myself hard as that may be. In the silence I can recall with pinpoint accuracy all my failures and mistakes. As I surrender my whole heart to God I find the deafening silence can become something beautiful. Like a heart transplant patient as I lay it out in the open the Surgeon inspects it, dissects it and repairs it. Instead of the infection spreading the Surgeon gets to the root.

He has done this for me today and He wants to do so for you. It is true that feelings will come and they will go. Fickle friends I suppose you could say. You cannot put too much stock into them however there is one thing they are good for. They often alert you to a greater problem that lurks. A precious friend posed the following question concerning a particular emotion:

Don't you think God is big enough to handle your anger?

I'd learned to suppress my emotions and never deal with them. Of course God can handle my emotions and they certainly don't catch Him by surprise.

In our still moments today, may we lay our hearts out on the operating table and may the Surgeon do His work.