Silence Is...

I like quiet.  I mean, moderate quiet plus some music…a little music with the sunset and a cup of coffee.  I used to do that.  Back when I worked a nine to five and came home to nothing but an apartment and a ten dollar coffee pot.  I’d sit and drink my whole cup of coffee while it was hot with no interruption and sometimes even put my feet in warm bubbly water and then paint my toenails, enjoying the silence.  I was pretty wild in those days.  Little by little that quiet has been replaced with people…and I love it…wouldn’t trade it for anything.  Even if I have to drink my coffee cold while the sun rises when I should be snuggled up in my bed.  Even if I haven’t used the bathroom without an audience for three years.  Even if it means I drive and sing along with Veggie Tales instead of Adele (when I really get going it’s hard to tell our voices apart).   I traded the silence for the sound of little feet running barefoot on the kitchen floor.  Tiny voices singing or laughing…or screaming.  Mostly screaming.  I love it.  All of it.  I would never have imagined I would spend so much time playing trains trying to mimic Thomas the Tank Engine’s voice or roaring like a lion and chasing my boys around on all fours until my knees give out (roughly thirty seconds).  

The quiet is long gone and now I know the truth.

They say silence is golden.  But now I know that’s not true.  I mean, maybe it’s true for those people who like doing things like fishing and hiking.  I haven’t quite figured out that whole love of nature thing.  In my house silence isn’t golden.  Silence is messy.  Very very messy.  Silence is trouble.  Silence means Bez is

out the door trying to get into the neighbor’s house so he can play with their kid’s trains.  It means Benaiah has figured out how to break through the baby gate and is upstairs playing in the toilet again.  These days I’d take the Little Einsteins theme song a hundred times in a row over silence because even though it might mean I want to pull my hair out…it’s clean.

Most recently in our house, silence is heartbreak.  Silence is messier than ever.  It’s a mess I can’t clean up.  Silence took a regular baby checkup and turned it into a broken dream.  I laid down to listen to my littlest love’s heartbeat and got up knowing he was gone.  We were so excited for this baby.  He was wanted, planned, loved.  I spent the next days praying…praying and fully believing that God would give our baby back.  I knew it wasn’t beyond the scope of what He can do.  I promised Him I would tell anyone who would listen about our miracle.  I kept asking my husband Brandon to check again with our little doppler, fully expecting that the heartbeat would be there.  We could go back to living and baby could go back to growing.  We waited a few days and had an

ultrasound that I had hoped would confirm a miracle, but instead confirmed a nightmare.  When the days passed and nothing changed, it was time to go in to be induced.  My third boy was born at exactly 5:30 in the morning on May 6 and there it was…silence.  Silence was messy that day.  Silence represented the moment a dream died for us.  The moment I knew I would never hear my boy laugh or cry or call for mama.  It was the moment I was handed a perfect, perfect little boy who would never look into my eyes or throw his arms around my neck.

Silence is not golden.  Silence means my boys are sleeping and I’m left with two hours worth of memories where I was kissing that little face.  Memories of sitting with my husband while we picked a name for our quiet little boy, holding him together and reminding each other that God is good…always good.  It’s memories of handing off our Enoch and knowing I’ll never hold him here again.  It’s laying awake desperate to be rocking a baby to sleep instead of clinging to an empty blanket.

But slowly, the silence turns into whispers.  Whispers that remind me of promises…that He will wipe away every tear, that there will be no more death, no sorrow, no crying.  Whispers that remind me that His plans are good, His love is great, and He hasn’t abandoned me.  I believe with all of my heart that He will give me “treasures hidden in the darkness” (Isaiah 45:3).  Suddenly the silence that brings whispers brings healing, peace, and rest.  The rest brings me to another day that I will spend wishing for my boy, but walking with the One who is holding him.