“Why is it so hard for us to be silent?”

Pastor Daniel asked the kids first, relating to, and reminding us of, the Silent Game, and its challenge to young ones to outlast any other in one of their greatest weaknesses: staying completely silent.

Although Pastor Daniel asked the adults to refrain from drawing a picture of the challenge of staying silent, I tried to conjure up some moment in time that I actually did remain silent, whether before the Lord or to win a juvenile game.

Two weeks ago, Josh and I celebrated 6 years of marriage, and we decided to have a mini retreat/getaway to the East Mountains.  My parents live in town and watched our son for us, and we spent our first joint overnight away from him.  On Saturday, about 20 hours into this retreat, Josh asked me how I was feeling about leaving Emerson behind and if I was feeling bored, nervous, etc.  He must have noticed that look on my face of not knowing what to cross off my list next. I had slept in until 8am, left the breakfast dishes lingering in the sink, soaked in the bath while listening to an audiobook, made meaningful conversation with Josh about life and marriage, wandered around outside, taken some pictures, sat on the porch swing and watched the rain…

I looked at Josh and said, “Everytime I have planned for Emerson to be cared for outside of myself, it has been for the purpose of getting things done.  I feel like I need to get things done, but what do I need to do?”

When I gave this rhetorical response to Josh, he was sitting in the plush window seat with a throw blanket draped over his legs.  His coffee was sitting nearby, steaming on the windowsill, and he was deep into a book about how to get the most out of reading the Bible.  He had picked up his Bible a few times in the midst of reading the book throughout the morning and exercised some of the books methods on some passages of Scripture.

He looked back at me and said, “I came into this weekend telling myself there is nothing I must get done.  I knew it would be nice to do some reading, or hiking, or resting, but that this weekend didn’t depend on accomplishing any of those things.”

When I am planning to sit in silence, my mindset is the same as what I approached the weekend with, and I tell God something like this: “God, I’m coming to you in silence now to get this done.  I need to hear from you in order to feel like I was productive in being silent.”  If my silence is not met with some sort of enlightenment or a new inner peace, then that time was wasted.

But what if I approached silence before the Lord like Josh approached the weekend, and instead said something like this: “God, I’m coming to sit in silence before you now, and it may be met with more silence, and whatever it produces may not be visible, tangible, or measurable in my eyes, but I know You are working in the silence, You are speaking in the silence, and You are present in the silence.”