The Blessing of Silence

"I'm finding myself at a loss for words, and the funny thing is it's okay. The last thing I need is to be heard, but to hear what You would say." ~ from "Word of God Speak" by MercyMe

If there's one thing that could be said with assurance about me, it's that I am a woman of words. I write for my job, I write here, and by simple virtue that I'm a woman who enjoys people, I love to talk. I'd rather communicate with someone than almost anything. So it goes without saying that for me to have a head cold that provides me with intermittent bouts of laryngitis and unending coughing is, well, annoying to say the least. There are self-deemed brilliant things that I long to add to conversation and can't. There are song lyrics I want to sing spontaneously and at prescribed times (such as at Christmas cantata practice) and I can't. I want to read to and with my daughter, an activity we both greatly enjoy, but I can't.

This is hardly the end of the world, I realize. Some might even call it a blessed time! When I take a step back to appreciate the virtues of voicelessness, I would tend to agree. In the past couple of days, I have discovered that there's a lot that I miss out on when I'm either talking or thinking about what I'm going to say next. The fact that my husband and I tend to laugh at exactly the same things at exactly the same time is one of those little jewels I miss when my laughter (which is louder than his) is all I hear. It reminds me that we are the perfect match for each other, as God intended all along. When I come home from being out, our dog - a truly delightful laborador/golden retriever mix - regales me with a chorus of happy howls. Normally, I howl right back at her. When I was unable to do this Friday afternoon, she howled a second and third time, a priceless canine cantata I would have missed otherwise.

Perhaps the sweetest lesson I've learned in all this came from our 6 year-old daughter, Sarah. Each night at bedtime, we read from her children's Bible. We recently finished the third time through it, so Friday night, we started again at Genesis. I told her she needed to read it, since my voice would not cooperate. When she read, "Let us make people in our likeness," I stopped her and pointed to the words "us" and "our." I had spoken about the importance of these words before and wanted to see if she remembered, but my voice gave out before I could finish asking the question. She said, "I know, Mommy. It's talking about God and Jesus together. Pretty cool, huh?" I was deeply touched by her steel trap of a mind, and by the delight she found in demonstrating her knowledge of God's Word. Had I been able to speak, I probably would have interrupted such a special moment.

The world is full of a lot of noise, isn't it? I was reminded this week of just how much needless noise I create. Sometimes we need a dose of silence so we can hear the sounds we've been missing. It can be simple, like your spouse's laughter, or it can be profound, like the blossoming of God's Word in a child. Keep watch over my tongue, Lord, not just to keep from saying something I shouldn't, but to keep me from missing something I should be hearing...like Your voice, alive and well in my little corner of the world.