Sometimes the busy-ness sparks my imagination. Sometimes I find, there simply are no words. They just don't come. There are strings of thoughts but nothing worth saying. There are clouds of emotion but nothing worth reporting. There is silence. . . oh the silence-- sometimes painful, sometimes welcome, sometimes it just "is."
In a word filled with sound-bytes and images and messages bombarding us from every direction, sometimes we get so used to the sounds that we fail to realize how destructive the noise really is for us. Distracted. Distressed. Disconnected from the One who calls to us in our waking hours, in our prayers, in our sleep. But we cannot or WILL NOT hear. There's too much noise all around us; too much noise inside of us. Sometimes I just want to scream, "STOP!" Stop the talking! Stop the phone ringing. Stop the black letters coming across the screen. . . JUST STOP! Just let me be. . . I just want to be.
And yet the paradox of that is that I have a very difficult time "just being." To just be, one has to be able to tolerate a certain amount of pain, I think.
Perhaps my inability to just be has to do with my threshold of pain, or lack thereof. I really have a high physical pain tolerance- I gave birth to two beautiful kids where the epidurals went awry and I felt all the pain on half of my body. I ran for years with chronic shin splints and a stress fracture in my foot. Until very recently, I haven't missed a day of work in years and years and years. (I only missed two because of a minor surgery!) But when it comes to the clearing of my mind. . . it rarely happens. . . there are always words and images floating past. . . and it's hard to not focus on them, difficult to let them go on by. Then I get distracted and there are no words of any meaning that come out so it's just better to stay silent.
I think that kind of "pain," if you can call it pain, is part of our human condition if we allow ourselves to really feel it. It's part of "being" human. I'd rather be injured, some days, than have to "feel" what there simply are no words for. On the other hand, at least I know I'm alive because I can still feel what I feel! Some days there is peace surrounding me, some days it is raw and open and exposed. That's life, right?
What to do with it all? I wish I had a prescription to share-- something that would take it all away but all I can do in those moments is utter to my Lord, "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison." The only words I can come up with which invite my Lord Jesus to enter into the darkness inside of me and take it onto himself for a few minutes so I can experience a flash of relief.
The good news is that, in the words of the old African American Spiritual, "He hasn't failed me yet." And I know that if I remember to come to him, he will do it for me over and over again until I no longer feel what there simply are no words for. . . pretty good deal don't you think?
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