Silence & Solitude

Dear Busy Church Member,

The dogs are barking because Amazon is here with a package, and apparently,
Amazon is a very real threat to our existence.  But no worries, my dogs faithfully try to
chase them away.  Every single time. And I hear my son in the other room singing,
“Where is my Hairbrush?” from VeggieTales. I have noise-blocking headphones on but I
can still hear him loud and clear.

Just for fun, I’m going to count how many times I get interrupted during the time it takes
me to sit down and type this.

Solitude and silence.
 
The things that are vital and yet feel impossible.
Are these really that important?  Why?  
And if they are, how on earth do I fit them into my crazy life?

Let me explain why silence and solitude seem impossible in my world.  We have a lot of kids. Nine, actually.  Five still live at home with us.  We are a blended family and when
we blended our kids, we blended our pets.  So we also have five dogs and five cats, a
few goats and a bunch of chickens and ducks. That alone is a lot of noise.  

On top of this we were also blessed with a lot of neurodivergence in our family in the form of Autism, ADHD and all the fun that goes along with that.  We have one kiddo who literally cannot be quiet.  He makes noise ALL the time.

Along with a big family, we both work (I work from home), we homeschool the youngest kids, we chauffer the older ones to and from jobs and we have a crazy number of appointments every week.
Oh...and I have chronic hives.
They show up at the worst times and make me miserable. In case you doubted that I
am crazy, I am also in grad school full time.

Solitude and silence feel impossible on most days...

Every day I wonder why God chose this life for me.  I wake up and know that I am not
capable of doing all that needs to be done. There are so many people in my life who need me, and they all need vastly different things from me.  Just when I think I have something
figured out, it changes again.  I am not up to the task God has given me.

I am constantly overwhelmed...
 
Thankfully, mornings are for me.  I don’t sleep well.  I often wake up in the night and
can’t fall back asleep. I’ve come to see those very early mornings as a blessing though
because at 3 am it is usually quiet, though I do hear a rooster occasionally.

It’s those mornings when I can’t sleep that I get up and just sit.  

Sit in silence.  
Sit with God.  

I end up pouring out my heart to him.  That’s when I tell him I can’t do this. I tell him he was wrong to ask this of me. That I need sleep in order to handle all that the day brings.  I
tell him that I hurt.  That I need his wisdom in dealing with the kids’ struggles.

I often cry...
But this is when God tells me who I am, and who He is.  It is because of these
times of silence that I learned for the first time at almost fifty that I am truly loved and
have been constantly pursued by God.  It is here, in silence and solitude, that I learned that God wants to partner with me to bring heaven to earth for my family and his people.  It was in silence and solitude that I learned that suffering is really a blessing in disguise as it grows my faith and dependence on God.  

So I get up before my family.  
Long before them.  
I need that time.  
I can’t make it without it.  

Sure, I lose sleep.  I am sometimes tired; however, I find that the time I spend with God is better rest than sleep could ever give me.  He knows what my body needs better than I do, and he gives me what I need, even if that is a sleepless night.

I am reminded of Isaiah 30:15:
 “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (ESV)

I have found this to be true.

Besides my mornings, I need to completely get away frequently.  We have to schedule it and have to plan it in advance.  We try to escape for a night every month, but it doesn’t
always work.  Thank goodness for older kids to watch the younger!

Every second of every day, there are decisions to be made, and it overwhelms and exhausts me.  I look forward to times away where there are so few decisions and no responsibilities. I desperately need it.

I am convinced that it is because of these times that I have finally been able to change
from some very sinful areas in my life.  One example, my older kids, the ones who knew
me a decade ago knew an angry woman with a very short fuse.  I yelled often out of
frustration. I begged God over and over to help me be patient.  I tried hard.  I read all
the books; I tried the methods.  And I felt like a failure. But I found that when I spend
time in silence, not with a list of things to get done, but truly rest, God has given me
what I need.  
The newer family members don’t have to see that part of me.  My youngest kids have no idea what I was like before, and I am beyond grateful for that.

God has changed me, and that happened in those times of silence and solitude.

“The more I practice this discipline, the more I appreciate the strength of silence.  The
less I become skeptical and judgmental, the more I learn to accept the things I didn’t like
about others, the more I accept them as uniquely created in the image of God. The less
I talk, the fuller are the words spoken at the appropriate time. The more I value others,
the more I serve them in small ways, the more I enjoy and celebrate my life.  The more I
celebrate, the more I realize that God has been giving me wonderful things in my life,
the less I worry about my future.  I will accept and enjoy what God is continuously giving
to me.  I think I am really beginning to enjoy God (Dallas Willard in The Spirit of the
Disciplines).”

I love this.
I chase it now.  
I look forward to it.

Appointments by myself gives me chunks of time in the car driving and waiting where I can sit still (sort of). It takes fifteen minutes to take my daughter to work, and on the way home, I get to rest.  I find the moments where I am by myself, and I use them. I soak it in.  And with God’s help, I come home ready to tackle whatever I find there, even Amazon drivers and the world’s loudest
dogs.

Six times. That’s how many times I was interrupted.  And now I have to go pick up my
sick daughter who is being sent home from work early. But it’s fifteen minutes by myself
in the car.  I can’t wait.

- Becki K.