Silence: Connecting with Self

Silence is rarely an atmosphere I seek out purposefully.

Silence instead is usually a consequence of forgetting my ipod at home when I’m out for a ride in my car, not having cable or internet access readily available when I’m away from home for the night… or even worse, when I forget my cell phone or it loses its charge… I text message a ridiculous amount on a daily basis.

I spend a good majority of my day escaping silence, surrounding myself with noise.

Honestly, I can’t remember my life before it was this way… perhaps these are just examples of the noises I use now as distractions… but maybe in my past I used different activities and things to create noise and avoid silence.

Do you do this? What is your distraction? How do you escape silence?

For whatever reason, silence causes me to be anxious… perhaps, if we’re honest, we all can say that we feel the same way or at least similar.

But what is so frightening about silence? Why is it that some of us, including me, are afraid of being alone with our thoughts… being separated from our distractions and concentrating on what is actually happening in our life…

There have been times in my life where I have, against my own will, been forced into silence.

Nearly two years ago I moved to Nashville, TN for graduate school. During my first several months in Nashville, I never felt more alone. My relationship with my family and friends back home were under great tension because of a faith crisis I was openly enduring, I had recently broken up with my girlfriend and best friend of nearly two years only two months before, and I had moved into a small 8 x 8 dorm room alone where I would spend the next year of my life away from everyone I was close to and loved.

I was utterly alone and in my aloneness there was the starkest silence I had ever experienced.

For several months I would wake up to an empty room, check my messages only to find zero, I would walk nearly a mile to class for a few short hours a day and then return back to my dorm room… and again be trapped by the silence.

At first I fought against it… I felt so anxious I could hardly even sleep and most nights I remained up until 4 or 5 in the morning attempting to find ways to keep myself busy where I wouldn’t have to think about all the things that were going on in my life.

It was just too painful.

Over time I became more accustomed to the silence and it no longer felt so uncomfortable. It took several months of anxiety before I made a commitment to myself to stop fighting and to spend time in silence, purposefully, each day.

For a year, I made the commitment to no longer drive my car when I could walk. To read a book instead of watching a movie, playing a video game, or turning on my TV, and to walk or run at least a mile around campus each day without my ipod so that I could pray or just have time to think.

During that time I never felt more connected to God and more aware of myself and my own personal needs. Before that I time, I had always surrounded myself with so much noise that I rarely took the time to be aware of who I truly am or how I felt about the world around me.

Instead of having my own original thoughts, I was constantly looking through the lens of the lyrics of my favorite music, the words of my favorite authors, or the images presented in my favorite films… I rarely took time to get to know myself in silence… to think for myself and to voice those thoughts with my friends and family.

Please do not misunderstand me… I love music, movies, books, watching TV, text messaging, talking on my phone… you name it… all of these things are good but can also be abused.

At what point do these things stop becoming conveniences and instead become distractions from self awareness and knowing who we are as human beings.

How much of our life is filled with unnecessary noise simply because we are afraid of the power of silence to reveal a more true image of who we are in our current state?

Are we afraid of knowing ourselves because we would surely fall short of who we image ourselves to be?

There is a passage in the Hebrew scriptures found in the book of Hosea, the third chapter where God is speaking to the prophet Hosea of His plan to bring the nation of Israel back to Himself.

God says, “I will win her back once again. I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there. I will return her vineyards to her and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope. She will give herself to me there, as she did long ago when she was young, when I freed her from her captivity in Egyppt.”

Perhaps this passage can reveal to us God’s heart to draw His people, to draw us, into a place of silence… to bring us out of the noise of our daily lives… to quiet the distractions…

And in that place, perhaps this is where we can truly connect to God… to hear His voice as He tenderly speaks to us… away from the noise of the world.

Perhaps this is where we begin to understand ourselves, who we truly are… perhaps this is where we find purpose for living… even amidst a noisy and painful world.

God’s Peace.
Josh