When God is Quiet

It really seems unfair, you know, to shove a bunch of words and emotions into one person and expect her to also, by the way, learn self-control.

It's why I look at Z, when it seems he's feeling something for the first time and all he can do is cry or scream or make some garbled noise, with his eyebrows raised, on his tippy-toes, & arms extended out, as if to say:

"MOM, WHAT IS THIS SOMETHING I FEEL IN MY CHEST AND WHAT THE HECK DO I DO WITH IT?!"

I raise my own eyebrows and think, "You and me, kid, we're the same."

It may not be on my tiptoes with arms extended; but it's me hunched over the stove, trying to scrub out the words that spilled out because of insecurity or fear or anger because most of the time, I don't know what the heck to do with all the emotions rolled up tight and twisted and the thoughts that climb on top of each other, loud & clamoring, as I try to work it out.

The inner-monologue rolls fast and jumbled and quite often spills out onto those that are close.

And so four weeks into walking in the shadow of these stony giants, it dawns on me that, possibly, God brings me into the mountains to learn (yet again) how to listen.

He is quiet in the mountains, and his quietness begs my own.

Because His quiet is not empty; nor is it full of anger, or resentment, or fear, or contempt, as the human kind can be. It is full of power and majesty and redemption and it brings me to my knees.

When God is quiet I can hear the hope that anchors my soul, and all the clamoring thoughts?

They lay right on down.