I wrote following post in October. It seems like it was the key that fit the hole, turned the lock, and opened the door to my breakdown. The words poured out of me in strength: then fear rushed in to the vacancy the words left behind. I can remember every day from the day the story in my words happened, until three weeks later, as though the days and their moments were blocks stacked unevenly one atop another until the final block made the tower crash down. A few days after writing this post I had a massive panic attack. How can a person turn the tide and step out of the story they’ve been trapped in — and reclaim their life? I thought I could just up and stand one day, write some words, find some courage, shake off the last couple of years and move on. I discovered I didn’t have the strength to stand. The anxiety crashed down and, though more managed, has not left.
I remembered this post tonight. Ha, I thought. I still have a voice. I suppose, all these months later, it’s still true.
October 19, 2018
Driving past the newly planted rows, the setting sun turning the foothills to gold and transforming spider’s webs to lace, words land in my heart. They are an answer to a question I have been asking for two years, and though they come with startling clarity, they settle gently as if I’ve known them all along. They say:
This has been a season of listening.
I hear them while also hearing my son recount his missed shots at soccer practice, I hear them while also hearing the roar of the tires on the dips of Brush Creek Road, I hear them while also hearing my question in the corner of my mind – the question that says:
I have been quiet – why?
I have been quiet. I’ve taken classes to unlock the silence; I’ve joined writing circles to ask the questions, reached out to friends. I’ve prayed. I’ve read. I’ve worshiped. I’ve sat over blank screens and empty pages and held my fingers or my pen in the air, and over and over when words bubbled up, I told them no. No, I will not write you. No, I will not touch you. No, I do not trust you. No.
I could not bear the weight of my words. I could not bear to put expression to the truth or to the pain, could not pull myself far enough for long enough from the drama erupting in my close circles, could not create any amount of distance from the clashing gongs and clanging symbols all insisting they were love. I have not been able to trust myself to tread wisely the line between private and public, sacred and common, or to discern accurately that which is my story and that which is not mine to tell.
In this season, I was betrayed, and told the betrayal was justified. My privacy was violated, and I was told the crime was righteous. I was slandered, and told the lies were truth. I loved, and was told I hated. I was misquoted, and told the words were mine. I was used as collateral in other people’s games, and told my wounds didn’t matter, because they were secondary and I’d just been in the way. I showed up and was told I never arrived.
As destruction laid waste to relationships, the Holy Spirit was invoked again and again as the inspiration for injustice; the Gospels of Christ used again and again as a defense for infliction of pain.
And I have listened.
I have listened to the lies, and have known them to be false.
I have listened to the truth, and have known it to be true.
I listened longer to allow life to play out, to see if first instincts and throbbing convictions held water over time, to see if they held even when I wished I was wrong.
I have listened to other things, too.
I have listened to my husband show me he loves me with a gentleness as strong as a tower, and have had this love as a contrast to the false loves in the world.
I have listened to the voices of my sons and daughters as they enthusiastically engage the real and true things of life, and have had this reminder of what really matters held up in contrast to all the false realities that lay battle for my mind.
I have listened to the voices of the trees across the pasture, the leaves coming to bud, and shaking in summer evenings, and drying out and coming loose to Autumn’s breeze. I have listened to the murmur of my blueberry bushes, as I prune in the winter, and tie up in the spring, and rescue from blackberry vines in the summer, and I listen still as they turn ablaze and command my heart to quiet. I have listened while I drive, while I read, while I converse, while I process emotions and circumstances, while I process tomatoes and cucumbers, while I fold laundry and follow politics and chop potatoes and strain applesauce and muck chicken poop in the barn. I have listened while I hold my husband in bed and come through the grief and place weight on my faith to see if it holds, and give up my dreams and question my doctrine, and mourn my church and cling to the books of Lamentations, of John, of Zephaniah, of Colossians. I have listened while singing the hymns of my foremothers to the children in my arms.
I have listened to the sounds of almost truth and actual truth, of looks-like-love and actual love, of hatred and humility, of false romance and the real deal, and know that sometimes that which we’re told ‘is as solid as the Gospel’ is just a bunch of shame cowering behind a veil.
Things are not always as they seem.
This has been a season of listening.
The words string out along the cobwebs floating across my eye line, and I am stunned by them even as I am stunned by the visual beauty that is Fall.
I counter the words. I say, I haven’t always listened well. There were times it would have been better to speak. But the gentle Voice ascribes meaning to what has felt like a drifting waste, and tells me not a moment, not a tear, not a question, not a prayer has been lost. He’s still here.
It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.
This has been a season of listening.
And I still have a voice.
You do