A Time to Keep Silence
I’ve asked myself that more than once looking back. Because that’s really what it comes down to. It is not a matter of not knowing. It is Knowing, and refusing to say it out loud, even to myself, because saying it meant giving up control of it.
That’s always been my problem, if you want to call it that. I fix things. I don’t sit around waiting on something to get better. Instead, I go find the fix. But there’s a strange thing that happens when the thing that’s wrong is you. Fixing it means admitting it first. And admitting it means you’re not the one steering anymore. Somebody else, a doctor, a diagnosis, a calendar full of appointments you didn’t choose, starts steering for you.
So instead of admitting it, I made up excuses. Told myself it was just a bite I hadn’t noticed healing right. Told myself the mouth heals fast, always has, give it another week. Told myself a dozen small, reasonable sounding lies, one after another, because each one bought me a little more time inside the version of my life where nothing was wrong yet.
I know now that’s called denial. At the time, it just felt like waiting for the right moment.
Fourteen months out, I can see that stretch a lot clearer than I could live it.
What I Didn’t Know Then
There’s a verse in Psalm 32:3-4 that says: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away… my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”
I read that after everything, and it stopped me, because that’s exactly what it was. The silence wasn’t neutral. Chronic stress can wear on the body in exactly that way — and mine had been carrying it for months without a name
What I didn’t know and what I couldn’t have known, was how close I actually was.
I was one dentist appointment away from hearing a word I wasn’t ready for.
I didn’t know that yet, sitting in my own denial. But something in me must have, because I remember that after that appointment, after I finally stopped bargaining and let someone look at it, I slept. Really slept. First time in weeks. I hadn’t even realized how much the not-knowing, the not-saying, had been sitting on my chest until it wasn’t there anymore.
That’s the strange thing about the season of silence. You don’t always know you’re in it until it ends.
A Time To Speak
There’s another verse that’s been sitting with me lately. Ecclesiastes 3:7, KJV: “A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” I used to think that verse was about picking the right moment to say the right thing. Now I think it means something bigger. It means the silence wasn’t wasted. It was just a season. My season for staying quiet had a beginning and it had an end. I just didn’t know yet where that end was.
I know where it was now. It ended in a dentist’s chair.
And I’ve come to believe the silence had a purpose I couldn’t see from inside it. Because if I hadn’t stayed quiet as long as I did, if I hadn’t bargained, IF I hadn’t made up every excuse I could find, I don’t know that I’d have anything to say to you right now.
This is the speaking. This is what came after the season of silence ended.
If you’re the one still moving the goalposts, still telling yourself it’s a tongue bite, a tooth, a nerve, whatever your version of that story is — I’m not going to tell you God is waiting on you to hit some spiritual mark before you’re allowed to speak up. I don’t believe that’s how it works.
What I believe is this: your season of silence has probably already run longer than it needed to, and there is no perfect way to say that thing. You don’t need the right words. You just need to stop keeping the one you already have.
Say it tonight. To your person. However it comes out.
The appointment will get made. Whatever is waiting on the other side of that door, you won’t be walking in there alone. The second you say it out loud, somebody already knows. Somebody’s already standing with you before you even sit down in that chair.
Nobody Fights Alone
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13
