
One of my favourite Bible passages has always been “Be Still and Know that I am God (Psalm 46:10)
I interpreted it in different ways over the years and I chopped off the word God for quite a while. When I was into new age beliefs I still used it but heard the ‘know I am’ as my higher consciousness. That all seems crazy now and I am so glad I didn’t stay in those beliefs for long and at some point I will write a blog about them as many as they are causing much harm and I hope my ‘lived experience’ may help others.
But back to the stillness. I really struggle with this. I go for long walks in nature and I find some stillness there, without question, but when I come home I hate silence and doing nothing at the same time. I don’t mind silence if I am doing housework, writing or something else, but I notice even when I go to prepare a meal I put something on – a podcast, a YT video – something that connects me to something and of course, to help me avoid what stirs in the silence or in the preparation of food, being home alone mostly, feeling isolated. I lay awake at night sometimes and it is extremely quiet where I live, but my mind goes into overtime thinking about consequential and inconsequential things, skipping about from one topic to the next. Its noisy in my head! But its tiring and is getting more painful.
What am I afraid of in the silence?
What will happen if I stop and do nothing and watch nothing and listen to nothing?
I am in heavy addiction avoiding the silence.
I reach for the TV, during the adverts
I look at my phone,
Do a ‘job’ that needs doing.
I fidget, I fuss, I scatter
My mind, my body and
My soul into a thousand places.
Never really resting.
Never really paying attention
To my own heart.
It hurts,
But I must be more afraid of
THE hurt.
I avoid the silence,
Yet I hear God is found there
And so am I.
Silence holds truth too.
The only time I listen to quiet is in nature,
Though nature is never really silent.
The rustle of leaves in the trees,
The lap of waves,
Crunch of stony sand,
The song of birds,
The squelch of mud
And the whispering wind.
It is a sensory experience
Of sounds, smells, sight and touch
So it doesn’t feel deadly silent.
And that deadly silence
Is what I dread
And avoid.
As a kid,
I was alone in the middle of the night
With nightmares,
Being chased
And tortured
With fear.
Seeing scary faces in the patterns of the curtains,
As I fell asleep.
No one came to comfort.
I would sit there shaking,
Forcing myself to think of
Christmas trees,
Ice creams
And poppies in fields.
I told my mother once and she said
“Why are YOU having nightmares?’
In a derogatory tone –
The morning
After the night before
When we had escaped
My violent stepfather
At midnight,
Shuffled into a car
In our nightclothes.
So, I learned to be silent inside
And avoid the silence outside.
In a room,
Just me
Doing nothing.
No sound,
No voice,
No comfort
Just me in a void
With my feelings;
How uncomfortable
I feel in my own body.
Its lumps, aches,
Pain and stiffness.
My breath,
My belly
They all appear.
In noise,
I can forget
What my body is trying to tell me:
The weight around my neck and shoulders,
The soft wobble of my belly,
The heaviness of my legs,
The backache behind my heart
And the tenderness in my gut.
In the silence,
My thoughts wander and flutter
Some random, unimportant.
Some deeper, important,
A memory,
A face, a time and place.
A sense of loss,
Sadness, fear, anger.
Moments of remembered
Innocence and its loss.
Silence takes me to
Thoughts and feelings
I don’t want to dwell in
Yet am stuck in
Because I avoid them.
But how truth revealing the silence is
So, do I want truth?
Or do I judge what comes up so much?
Fearing lack of control,
Safety.
Curiosity would like the silence
And all it reveals.
Curiosity would follow the trail,
Down and in,
Around and through.
Curiosity would let the silence
Tell me who I am right now
And be curious how to change that.
Silence gives room to imagination,
Creation, dreams and feelings.
My soul is heard in the spaces
Without noise
So that I get used to hearing my soul
Even in the noise.
I’m often not fully in my body,
Running from shame and discomfort.
I wonder when I was last in,
All the ways to my toes.
Could silence bring me home?
Meditation,
Used to take me further away.
It felt like rest,
But it felt like escape.
I could drift off to places and colours
And dip into co-dependent ‘fixes’
With spirits.
A ‘pretty’ plaster
Over a toxic wound.
Not big enough to cover
The cavernous hole in my heart.
Silence reminds me of the nightmares,
But it’s not really them.
The nightmare has become
Staying stuck
In the past pains,
Holding on too tightly
To avoiding ‘vulnerability.’
Sometimes a nightmare
Is not what it seems,
The same as the foreboding dark, mass of trees
in a wood at night.
You hear noises, see shadows everywhere
Imagine the worse.
Only to find the wind had blown through branches
Or a gentle deer was running
Through brambles.
Sometimes a nightmare is just telling you the truth.
Processing our painful emotions
Is not the same as the hurt we have from our childhood.
The pain I had as a child
Had no purpose.
Feeling my feelings does.
Pain with a purpose.
Pain that could lighten my load.
I never once really cried, sincerely
Without feeling
Better afterwards.
My guides are telling me
I will find God in the silence.
A place where I stop,
Free from noise and distraction.
A place where I can sit with God
And get real about what I feel.
Where I can make room for God’s Love
And Truth.
Being busy
Distracting in a myriad of ways
Isn’t working.
Time for different.
I’m scared of that Love,
So overwhelming
I may drown,
Or lose myself.
But no, I have already lost myself
In distraction.
Love would never drown me
And Love would never want me to disappear,
Or be controlled
Or manipulated
Or suck the life out of me.
Real love, never would.
Sigh! The irony of our error.
In the silence,
I’ll have to get real.
With myself,
With my body,
With my soul.
And with my Father,
Who patiently waits…
For some crazy reason
Called Love.
Love for His rebellious, stubborn,
prodigal daughter.
In the silence,
We may be found.
In the silence,
El Adonai-Roi
The God who sees Me.
And wants me to see me.
Silence is calling me to
All the places
I’m scared to feel
But will heal me.
And I want to heal,
And I want to feel
Again.
To be real,
Truly alive
Again.
Know myself,
Know my God.
To know the potential
Waiting for me in the silence.
@maxinecreates 2022
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