A Loving Silence

"With the people I love most I can sit in silence indefinitely. We need both for our full development; the joy of the sense of sound; and the equally great joy of its absence."

- Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

My dad is the one who taught me about this. As a child I remember being a little puzzled as to why it was so easy to just sit with him and not say anything. I also remember thinking how nice it was to be with someone like that and eventually coming to the conclusion as I grew older, that if you can sit quietly with someone and not feel that the moment was lacking, there was a special element of your relationship that isn’t often duplicated. It’s a quiet linking of two souls that cuts through all the complexities of the universe and rests upon an understanding that, whatever else is going on in your lives at this moment, “this is good.”

Daddy was a “man of few words” as the saying goes, but all of us kids knew that when he did say something, it was going to be relevant and well thought out.

The flip side of being comfortable with silence in a relationship is knowing when your words can be helpful and when they can be hurtful. When I asked him (I was in 10th grade) to write out a quote in one of my blank notebooks, this is the one he chose:

He had memorized it as a boy. I think it was a timely lesson for a tenth grader. As I read it now, I am wondering whether I must’ve needed that lesson at that moment in my life?!! It’s another complicated part of growing up that just because you can vocalize whatever you feel, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. It is not about stifling your true opinions or repressing your freedom of expression, it’s about a mature understanding of weighing your words lest you cast them carelessly out where they can’t be easily retrieved.

That’s something we can probably all improve on, regardless of age. As the saying goes, “Lord, Keep my words soft and tender because tomorrow I may have to eat them.”

Words, both spoken and unspoken, may be the heartstrings that help tie together and build a relationship. We all mess up with our words, tossing out things we wish we could take back. It’s a true blessing when we are loved by people who forgive us when we do just that.