When the Words Won't Come

Nothing.

It all swirls around in my head. Words about life. Words about adventure. Words about experiences. Words about devastation. Words about heartbreak. Words about injustice.

They are all just individual words with no course of action. I think I have a potential blog post, but when I open up the text field, nothing comes.

Nothing.

Silence is usually seen as a negative thing. Someone gives you the silent treatment. When someone is silent, we assume something is wrong. Silence makes us feel ignored. It provokes unwanted feelings and thoughts. Silence has a way of opening up the floodgates for all things bad. At least it does for me.

But at the same time, we crave silence. We long for the chaos in our own personal worlds to be quieted. Moms will go to great lengths to get some silence. Teachers will plead with their students for just a minute of silence.

We love it and hate it all at the same time. Silence. It's either exactly what we need or the last thing we wanted.

Silence is no easy concept. Seasons of silence from God are the hardest for me. Times in life where I'm so wrapped up in me that I continue on in my good endeavors without my great God. Times in life when God is teaching me, refining me, or testing me.

Silence hurts. In this season of life, I have prayed unceasingly for two very specific things.

Nothing.

No answer. No progress. No signs. No clarity.

So I wait. And I hope. I take the silence as a sign to keep pressing on. To keep reading God's Word. To keep loving the people God has put in my life. To keep praying even in the silence.

Silence is teaching me endurance and perseverance and patience. And a host of other things that I didn't even know I needed to work on. I'm also learning that maybe what I perceive as silence is just God inviting me deeper to find him in the smallest of life's moments.

God has never spoken more loudly in my silence than when I'm watching the sunset as I drive through New Orleans. Or when I'm swinging in the park watching the people walk around me. Or when that friend reaches out and asks how I'm doing. Or when the exact song I need to hear comes on the radio. Or when a passage of Scripture keeps coming back to mind. Or when God holds off the rain for you to move.

Even in silence God is all around us. God is in everything. God is here with us. He is here with me. Always.

Nothing. Nothing comes together like I expect it too, but everything comes together the way God had planned all along. Even this blog post.

So when the words won't come, I trust that God is teaching me something through the silence.

Have you ever felt like God was silent? Have you ever, like me, equated someone else's silence in your life or unanswered prayers with silence from God?

I pray that God speaks into all of our hearts today and every day even in what feels like silence.