And Then There Was Silence

Silence can feel like death or silence can be freeing.  People can be in your life one moment and then become silent, making you question your worth. Silence of death. Your home becomes silent because all your kids are now in school and you jump for joy. Silence of freedom. Oh wait, maybe that’s just me! Ha! I was a, go ahead be gone now, kind of a mom. Don’t get me wrong, so so so love my kids, but so so so loved them even more when they went to school! 🙂

There was a silence that almost destroyed my heart a few years ago.  Before our sweet pup Ivy came into our lives, we had a sweet girl Mulligan. She was a gift from my boyfriend at that time who became my husband.  My beautiful chocolate lab had been my healthy replacement for my cutting. I was in an uphill climb with my healing and wanted to focus on something healthy. The unconditional love of an animal is irreplaceable.  She went with me everywhere. She was all my kids knew because, well, she was there first. Then my sweet girl needed to go see Jesus. The first day that I took all the kids to school and didn’t come home to a wagging tail at the door, I thought for sure my heart fell out of my chest.  The emptiness was almost loud. Is that possible? I don’t know how else to describe it. That whole day I remember thinking, no person should ever have to feel this. I know each of you at some point have been there, each on their own level of emptiness, each of you experiencing silence from a loss.  Hope seems like it was there yesterday but disappeared the moment you opened your eyes. The truth is, it never left you. It’s in the core of who you are. It clings onto the unfailing love of our Jesus. Psalm 33:22 ‘May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.’   Shoot, Lord knows we don’t always feel it. Sometimes it takes everything just to put two feet on the ground but guess what, that’s two feet full of hope right there. 

Silence, emptiness, pain, crappy days, we can’t make them disappear and if I find a magic way for that to happen, it will be in big letters on my next entry, I promise. In the meantime, we look to our right and to our left.  We realize the hope that sits next to us and around us. We realize that the God that created the beauty of this world walked it and lived the silence and the pain you have or are experiencing. Hope doesn’t always look like fireworks and rainbows.  Sometimes hope is the next breath you take and the sweet smile you see. 

“Hope does not need to silence the rumblings of crisis to be hope.”