Silence

I’ve been trying to find my blog post where I talk about my uni residential in January but I can’t find it… maybe I dreamt that I wrote which is a high possibility. At my January residential 2 lecturers independently of one another spoke about the importance of silence and quiet days. One of the lecturers did an exercise with us (…I’m sure I’ve written about this…) where we asked the Holy Spirit to give us all one word that we can hang on to. So we prayed and everyone received a word. As they were going round the room, words like “Child” and “Love” and “Sword” were being revealed… what was mine? “Silence” and at that current time on January if there was one thing I didn’t have, and desperately avoided it was silence. I would do anything for the house not to be silent, the moment I woke up I put on a podcast or a teaching, anything to fill the silence, so you can imagine how I pleased I was to receive that word, but I was good and when I got home from resi I didn’t switch on a podcast straight away and I did have moments of quiet… fast forward to Feb and March where I have such awful jaw tension I can literally do nothing. All I could do was sit on the couch with my eyes closed, the moment I thought about anything other than Jesus it would flare up, I couldn’t watch tv, or listen to anything, I was in a forced silence, but it worked. The past few weeks have been so horrible and I have felt so mentally fragile, I knew I needed to do something and was looking at a pilgrimage but I just don’t have the time, I really really want to do one though. So as I mentioned in my last post I booked myself in to a quiet day at a retreat centre one of my friends I used to work with years ago works at. The chapel there is called The Chapel of the Holy Spirit. When you go to somewhere with a name like that you pretty much know there’s a high possibility it’s gonna be good. And it was. I didn’t get any amazing revelations or words from God but it definitely calmed my mind and my spirit. I feel clearer now and not as fuzzy. I feel like the inner dialogue has chilled out a bit as it was deafening. Now I understand why people recommend quiet days and retreats and why it’s important. Go on one. It’s so worth it. Therapy tomorrow, pray for my therapist, she may need it as there’s still an awful lot that I need to go through regardless of the calmness I now feel… but that’s life right?