I hesitate to post anything somber, since it has been so long since I've taken the time to post anything of note. But I'm struck today by silence. Many times we have the overwhelming desire to fill our days with everything, anything, to make it through. Personally, my days are full of stuff that I'd rather not be doing. I'd rather sit in silence with my family and marvel that we made it through. Silence is a hot commodity in the house of an infant, though. And even before him, silence was often considered "uncompatible". If we didn't talk then we had nothing to talk about; therefore we were uncompatible.
As a people, however, we have a tendency to speak when no words need to be spoken. When we are brave enough to share our emotions, we want empathy, not fixes. When we are brave enough to speak our fears, we want support, not stories of how others relate. When we are brave enough to speak of sin, we want forgiveness, not judgement. I think when it really comes down to it, we know how to fix things, we know our fears are often not going to materialize, we know as Christians we are forgiven. We want support. We want love. We want a friend, a spouse, a confidant, a sense of peace. And none of those can be found in words. We know all the sayings, "God won't give you more than you can handle." "Everything in it's time" "Everything has a reason", etc, etc.
What we often don't know, but we wish we did, is that we are loved enough, important enough, and good enough. I am good enough for your silence. This tells me you empathize, you love me, you care enough to give me my time to speak. If we listen enough, everyone has something they need to say.
