silence

Silence. It is pretty hard to find these day in our ever-changing, always-connected world. Technology provides a constant hum of background chatter, even if we aren’t really paying attention. Silence take work. Silence is intentional. Such has been my silence here in this place: intentional.

I have not written or posted much in the past 18 months because the truth is, I have not had anything productive to say. Peter Crone says, “Life will bring you people and circumstances to show you where you are not free.” Those people and those circumstances smashed into our lives a year and a half ago and the wreckage has been immense. The collateral damage was more than anybody anticipated and left my family reeling. We have been in an intense season of seclusion while we steadied the ship and began to heal the wounds left behind. Most days, my emotional bandwidth was just enough to make it to dinner. Then I would drag myself through bedtime cuddles with kiddos and fall into bed exhausted. The few times I did try to write, anger and resentment and all forms of ugliness graced the page. Delete. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

So I remained silent. And it was this wisdom that recovery taught me all those years ago. Only those walking in freedom can lead other people there. That has always been, and will continue to be the purpose of this space. A shared experience of freedom that shows others the way. So silence was the order of the day. The year. The season. Deep breath.

Today, with tears in my eyes and a massive amount of gratitude in my heart, I can say the Lord has done a deep work amidst the season of extreme loss. What was unraveled has now begun to be knit back together in ways only He would ever dream of doing. Fresh vision. Fresh ideas. Fresh plans. Fresh systems. Fresh relationships that are bringing fresh connections and fresh opportunities. We are now living out the words of Isaiah 43:18. The old is gone; the new has come.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now, it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

The Lord brought that verse to us in the early days of walking around, surveying the destruction of life as we knew it. Wilderness was a nice way of putting it, Lord. No way could we see anything new or good or healthy springing up here. There was nothing to revive, nothing to point to hope or healing. All we had was this word from The Word and Jesus. I heard it said recently that sometimes, we just need to let dead things die. So we did. Everything had to be surrendered to the process. The Lord did a DEEP pruning in every area of our lives; nothing was spared. And then the real work began of tending and watering an empty field with no idea of what would come from it. No vision or idea if or when a sign of life would burst through or what that would even look like. We were simply grieving what was lost while taking the next step of obedience. Day after day, month after month, doing the silent work of surrender, and praying this was, in fact, fertile ground. Turns out, it was not only fertile ground, it was holy ground.

My friend Becky said recently, “You know, I have had a front row seat these past few years to see what the power of a praying wife and the power of a heart surrendered can accomplish in the hands of the Lord.” AMEN, sister. Our family is now walking in that same field, full of green and ready to burst forth with the fruit produced in a season of hard, silent labor. There are still challenges on the daily, and we do not have it all figure out. This is not an attempt to tie everything up in a nice, neat little bow. We don’t even have bows at our house. We used to have ribbon, but it is probably buried somewhere in the guest room closet with that one slipper and the bathing suit I swore I would fit into one day. I digress. This is not a post to announce that we have arrived. It is simply a reminder that nothing is ever finished until we take our last breath on this earth. The God of Easter Sunday, was first the God of Good Friday. Death sometimes comes before new life. So maybe if something in your life looks dead right now, it might just be the beginning of the story, not the end.

The sign in our kitchen reads “There will be miracles.” I always believed it. Now, I KNOW it. And there is a difference. Believing God honors our silent work is a concept most Christians would say they agree with, but KNOWING means you are willing to bet the farm on it. We placed our marriage, our kids, our business and our finances in God’s hands and waited in the silence for what would come next. And the silence is where He does His best work. Little by little, revelation led to awareness and awareness led to action. Changes that were painful and changes that felt like release both moved us to a place of healing. Learning to talk less and listen more in every relationship produced fruit in unexpected places.

And that fruit has brought with it a renewed passion for helping others who are coming behind me on the journey. It was the reason Live Right Love Well started 7 years ago, and has always been my singular mission every time I sat down at the keyboard. I wanted to take 18 years of therapy and recovery and the dumpster-fires of life, and use them to give somebody else a hand. It was about giving people just enough hope to hang on until tomorrow to see what God could do.

There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance. Ecclesiastes 3 also says there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. So, here we go. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord. And may the things that fill this space point fellow weary travelers toward healing and ultimately, The Healer.

Hugs,

Amy