Words are my comfort. They soothe me. I’m the type who can feel words wrap around me. Their warmth, like a gentle embrace, allows me to forget the world around me. I cling to their every meaning. This can be both healthy and dangerous. Words I seek to hear save me. Those that I would prefer not to hear, on the other hand, break me down. Like antagonists, they plot to destroy. And they do. The very thing I cling to, can instantly ruin me.
I was recently trying to explain to someone very special to me that words can truly change someone. They can dry tears and right wrongs in the matter of seconds. They can steal smiles and wreck relationships with very little effort. Words are powerful. They will make or break you. Psalm 18:21 says “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” But what can be just as prevailing? Silence.
I have never been one to seek silence. And for the longest time I allowed myself to build up this half-truth that things can only be done by words; Arguments will only resolve with conversation, lyrics are what make every song effective, etc. And I used The Word to back up my little conclusion. I would cling to things like Psalm 86:7 (In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee: for You will answer me.) and make my own understanding. An understanding that would, in return, give me a skewed interpretation of the Word of God. “Call unto the Lord, for that is the only way He will answer” I continued to tell myself. I replayed that thought in my head a thousand times and forced myself to keep calling out to Him—screaming even. But what I never took into consideration is that no matter how many times you ask a question, if you do not pause and listen, you will never hear an answer.
God has never once stopped talking to me. He has always been whispering love and truths into my ear. When I call upon Him, He answers. The question, however, that I had to ask myself is “Why am I not hearing Him?” And finally, after spending so much of my quiet times in tears wondering why I hadn’t heard Him, I waited. I took breath after breath without speaking one word. Without thinking. And then there He was. No closer than He had been before. Because He had always been so close to me. But for the first time in a long while, I could hear Him. More than a faint whisper or a soft answer from within. I could HEAR Him. And with the words He was speaking, I could feel His heartbeat. In mine.
In the silence is where I found Him. When I stopped relying on words and sought His presence instead, He redefined intimacy for me. So in a world that screams for answers and is not content until someone screams them back, try to remember that the volume of silence can be louder than any spoken word. And when you finally allow yourself to give in and be still, that understand is the one that surpasses all.
In His Love,
Brittany Jade.
