Silence.  It's ironic to talk about it.  But I will.

It may come as no surprise that I like to talk.

I remember a grueling silence my first year of teaching.  I had witnessed a situation involving a fellow teacher and an administrator's son. In question was a refused bird house entry into a contest. I was the key witness in the matter.

The principal sat with his fist neatly folded as he looked at me from the other side of his desk stone-faced.  I told what I had observed.  As I finished, he stared, wordless.  My mind quickly raced.  (Was I leaving out any important information? Was he wanting my opinion?) He continued his gaze while I squirmed in the nothingness.  And then I did what any normal person would do.  I started relaying the same account; again.

He cut me off about twenty seconds into my replay,  "You don't have to talk.  I heard you the first time".

No words have caught me quite off-guard like those words.  It's fourteen years later and I remember that conversation (if that's what you call it).  Of course it hasn't stopped me from telling and retelling even life's mundane events; sharing my thoughts on things earth shattering to the trivial.  My Dad has said my mom and I take longer to tell things than the actual event.

I talk too much when I'm nervous.

And I talk too much when I'm perfectly comfortable.

Because of my incessant talking, I listen too little.

Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. -Proverbs 29:20  Youch!!! (exclamation and emphasis mine)

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.  -Proverbs 18:2

My prayer?  I don't exactly know;  I'm trying to say less. I simply know that anything God has to say, holds more value than my babbling and even my most thought-out words.  I want to learn to be silent.  And in the silence I want to hear.

I can't get out of my mind a time when I let silence speak.  A young woman I had never met, lost her four-year old son in a drowning accident.  He was in Hallie's Pre-K class.  Jason did the funeral.  I had rehearsed, as I often do, what I would say to her given the chance.  Those attending, exited by the casket to give their condolences to the grief-stricken woman. I knew that I had nothing to say though my heart ached for her.  So I simply grabbed her hand and held it for what seemed like eternity. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life.  In the silence God spoke for me.  He spoke to me.  That moment speaks to me still.

When have you been spoken to in the silence?