We need to listen to the silence. It’s talking, and we’re missing it. It’s easy to hear the noise, the loudest, the most passionate. The messages and anger that have been shouted for so long now, garnered all the headlines, snatched up all the attention. We assume that the number of decibels is equivalent to the amount of pain, the depth of determination, the validity of the cause, and yes, even the number of ever-to-be-considered votes. But assumptions are not always correct, and the silence has things to say, too.
Sometimes the most valid causes, the most passionate proponents, the most long-suffering champions… run out of things to say. Sometimes their silence says it all.
In the Bible there’s a story of a woman who suffered “an issue of blood” for twelve years. We don’t know much about her condition, her lengthy struggle, or the suffering she must have endured. We do know that over the course of 12 years, she saw many doctors, spent all her money, and had only grown worse. I imagine she was exhausted in every sense. I imagine it was all she could do to endure.
One day, when Christ is walking through a crowded street, she seeks healing, comes behind Him, and touches His robes. She does nothing else to grab His attention—perhaps she couldn’t do anything else to get His attention. It was crowded, and she was unhealthy, penniless, a woman, and according to culture, unclean. Maybe after 12 years of suffering and living in a culture where individuals were trained to neither see nor regard her, she had nothing left to say. Maybe literally all she could do was reach out her hand in faith.
But to Christ it didn’t matter. Christ’s ability to listen and feel transcends crowded streets, positions of power, and even voiceless pleas. He stopped everything, and looked around for the one in need. He heard her. And He healed her.
I am a special needs mom. For various reasons, I have lived the last three and a half years in various stages of quarantine in order to protect the health of my daughter. First it was to preserve her for two heart surgeries and to help her through healing afterwards. Then, it was two winters of expensive medications and RSV precautions. And then, of course, Covid-19. At this point in my years-long crusade of keeping my daughter healthy, happy, and alive, I have run, not out of needs, but out of things to say. Like the marathon runner who carefully calculates her speed, the swing of her arms, the clothes that she wears and whether after 21 miles they will chafe…I know that every movement counts. Every interaction, every post, every email regarding policy, every hour spent providing therapy, every homeschool lesson, every time getting up in the middle of the night to check oxygen saturation levels, every trip to the doctor… IT ALL COUNTS. And I, like so many other special needs and high-risk families, only have so much energy to give; I have to be extremely conscientious of where that energy goes. It’s not because I don’t believe in something strongly. It’s because I am literally exhausted from keeping someone alive.
What I’m saying is, there’s a lot of silence that we’re not listening to. We’re distracted by the ones with the loudest voices, and we’re missing all the ones that frankly have nothing left to give. We expect everyone to show up and fight for what they believe in, impress us with their rhetoric, persuade us with their petitions or speeches or anger or whatever…but we’re not acknowledging the equal efforts being put forth on the other side. Battles that, in some cases, have been waged for a long, long time.
What parent among us, what human for that matter, is not exhausted at this point in the pandemic? We have all been pushed to our limits in every possible way. The exhaustion in me acknowledges the exhaustion in you in some kind of sad, sardonic, pandemic “namaste.”
Humanity, like water, follows the path of least resistance. We cave to the loud ones because we fear their energy and public criticism. We celebrate when someone else writes a post that we agree with, because then we don’t have to write it, ourselves. We let things happen because we don’t have the energy it would take to win the whole world over to our point of view, ourselves. And we’re all exhausted. I get it. I GET IT.
But I just want to say, silence speaks, and we desperately need to be listening to it, NOW. Silence has numbers and passion and validity and lives that count. The silent ones are working and hurting and trying the best they can, doing all they can, surviving as long as they can. If you have any energy left at all, I plead with you to use it to lift those who do not. To stand up for things that will make their lives easier. To look past the raging, angry, crowded street, to the desperate souls in need right in front of you. They need more hands, more voices, more reinforcements, more love, NOW.
And to those who have reached out to our family… The phone calls, the messages, the check-ins, the simple “thinking of you” gifts… more than anything the EMPATHY… It has all kept me going, kept me fighting, kept me believing more than I can ever say. You are my angels. I thank you and I love you.