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Holy Solitude: Silence Week

From Betty Hollister...

I already admitted the kicking and screaming part, so this week I’ll confess about the silence.  As a widow, I am no stranger to silence.  Anyone who finds himself/herself living alone after 30+ years of sharing space with a spouse and family is well acquainted with that often unwelcome guest, “Silence.”  My love/hate relationship with silence began while my husband was battling cancer and the adverse effects of chemo.  Mornings were fairly normal, but afternoons required quiet for him to nap or rest.  At first only the cats seemed to revel in this downtime.  I can remember calling a friend and just whispering through my sobbing, “I can’t stand the quiet.”  As I look back on these times, I can see that this was the beginning of my reconciliation with God.  I had spent several years mad at God, blaming Him for “taking” my father, my mother and my brother in a very short time span and “letting” my husband’s cancer return.  Maybe it was this vacuum, this total loss, this silence that forced me to turn back to God.  I returned to scripture and prayer.  Not only those long silent afternoons, but those two A.M. terrors needed filling with something besides empty noise and anger.  Maybe this why I feel such empathy with Elijah’s still small voice.  No, I haven’t had to endure the cacophony of slaying 450 Baal prophets or standing on top a mountain during a fire or an earthquake.  But, I have had to watch the slow drip of a chemo pump and listen to the doctor say, “Well, the tests show…” Maybe it was the silence that forced me to find God waiting, oh so patiently, for me to let Him love me through all the loss and the pain and the fear. Maybe it was making peace with that silence that let me hear God whispering to me about hope. 

Comments

  1. JudiFebruary 24, 2018 at 8:29 AM

    Thank you, Betty, for sharing. I have found that the break from sound can be a sweet relief, but at other times it can almost be deafening. Does God use the quiet to work on us? I am a firm believer that God indeed does use the quiet: to let us hear something new, something we need to learn, something we need to remember.
    Today, as we are called to give Alms (sacrificial giving), where are you going to seek to give today? Will it be a significant tip at a coffee shop later? Will it be a gift to a nature conservancy that helps maintain spaces that we can go to in nature for that silence?
    As I write, the birds are calling in the backyard. Are they calling to us today? Is God using the birds to remind us of the nature all around, needed protection?

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