There are days like today, when I get lost in the quiet moments. All of the lights and televisions and telephones turned off, skies gray, and no one but the wind to keep me company. I very rarely allow myself the excruciating luxury of silence and stillness. I prefer to fill my days with rabble and rumbles and gravelly voices. With music and madness and the trumpeting sound of children at play. It is easier that way, to be surrounded by the outwardly loud. It stops me from listening too closely to the thundering shudder of my own heart beat. Or the nasally whisper of breath dancing in and out of my lungs. They always cause me to wonder at the sheer absurdity of my own being: I am here. And there are so many things I will never understand, my own willful and wistful thoughts not least of all. I've given up so much of me in pursuit of so many things...
But in these quiet moments, I can hear God more clearly. I feel His urging and reassurance like the gentle leading of a friend. My constant stream of endless worries are silenced, if only momentarily, and I am ushered into the embrace of a loving Father who knows my faults and fears. It is comforting in a way I cannot describe, but it is also terrifying. You see, when I allow myself to hear Jesus loudly, I am forced to accept that He is asking me to be different. To go where I may not be comfortable. To push myself outside of what I know and what I am used to. I feel a yearning so deep, so foreign, and so uniquely perfect that it must be divine. I know that I am called to do more. To be more. And I am promising now, in this quiet moment, to acquiesce. I will give up the things I am being asked to give up, but I will do so knowing that I do not walk this road alone. This past weekend, I heard someone speak about the dead sea. That it is dead because it is the lowest point on earth, so while the Jordan River flows into it, nothing can flow out of it. I do not want to be a dead sea. I want to give more of myself, to constantly have an outward flow. And while so much can be said about living for yourself, I am happy my life has never been my own. I am a garbled collection (a patchwork, so to speak) of the people and places; the dying dreams and unspoken wishes; the countless lapses in judgement and sleepy smiles; the roaring laughter and the feather light tear drops; they have been poured into me every single day of my life. Stories and paths that intersect, weave, tangle, separate...they have grown me. And I never want to stop growing.
There are those that believe differently that I do, that the voice inside is their conscience or perhaps their soul. I believe it is my maker and my savior. The difference, though, matters not. We all have the little voice inside of us. It will comfort and calm us. It will tear us down and then rebuild us. And when we are at our lowest, in a valley or the depths of a dead sea, it will direct us where we need to go. We need only stop our incessant cacophonous running and hear it.
