Abandonment
When silence wages war.
“This is not the time to be silent, please God, I beg of you, spare me this anguish”.
(Disclaimer: there is good silence, and there is bad silence. Today I will explore the bad, the silence of abandonment. Hold my hand).
Silence wages a war against my sanity. It had for a while now but I never allowed myself to confront that truth. I learned to fill the void with distractions, lots of them. So much so that it shielded me from really processing how detrimental it was that my loved ones chose silence as their punishment of choice. The discomfort seemed to have faded off into the background of life, it became monotony. When I had a need, especially one typical of a growing child, I would hold out my hands with expectation. My hands remained however, empty, void, until they grew heavy. Too heavy to hold yet, the perfect weight to wrap around and comfort myself. I learned to brace myself for silence, like it was something to be weary of. But, as time went on, I no longer flinched at its presence, rather, I welcomed it home like it was family.
Silence became familiar, and familiar doesn’t hurt, right? Right?!! Please tell me I’m right.
Maybe I should’ve noticed silence had become a weapon once I too began using it to punish those I loved. Maybe it should’ve rang a bell, a loud one. A siren even, “Vanessa! Cut this out immediately, this is not a healthy thing to do!”. I couldn’t understand how silence, a familiar friend, was hurting anyone, when I had taught myself it didn’t hurt at all. I could never quite figure out why others began to brace themselves whenever they recognized my silence was impending. I had gotten so accustomed to the anguish of silence that I had overlooked its effect.
Well, not until God did it to me. It’s hard to overlook something that God does when my gaze is stayed on Him.
Can I let you in on a little flaw of mine? (well, another one lol) Yes? Okay.
When I go through tough times, I tend to run and hide. I’m inclined to isolate and wallow away in my sorrows, demanding of everyone to leave me be, even at times demanding the same from God.
Just like Job did in Job 7:16, “I despise my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone; my days have no meaning”.
Okay, maybe not always as woeful, but you get the point.
Ironically, these moments where I push everyone away are the moments my soul cries out for a companion the loudest.
“Hush my soul, we do not need anyone right now. This is how it has always gone, get a grip”, I say to myself.
But truly, in my lowest of times, my desperation for God oozes from my skin like a fragrance, and at the scent of it, I am brought to my knees. It is much too strong to ignore. “Who am I kidding, God please, I need you right now. Please say something, anything at all. Please don’t leave me here alone”.
He remains silent.
I begin to lose it. Crying. Inconsolable.
.
Does God remain silent to mock and torture me? Or does His silence just merely reveal my weakness? A weakness I had failed to recognize, a weakness I tried to ignore. How I cannot go without a sound, how frail my hope becomes once His whisper is dimmed.
In God’s silence, I am made aware of my deep fear of abandonment.
Every word untold renders me small. In His silence I regress, in His silence I become a little girl again. The one who begged to be responded to, begged not to be forgotten, begged to be seen and validated, and begged not to be left.
Begging never worked, why have I not learned? Yet, here I sit once again at my Father’s feet. Begging.
“Abba, please don’t abandon me”.
My begging was never loud as a child, it was quiet, too quiet not to be heard. But with God, I had learned to scream, to bellow, to wail. To toss myself around drunkenly in His midst. To make a scene because this time around someone must notice me. This time around I will not deny myself of my needs. Quiet never got me anywhere.
The silence of abandonment makes me feel alone, trapped in a room surrounded by white walls slowly becoming gray. It makes me feel crazy, screaming into a void and not even my echo responds to me.
It is crushing, soul crushing.
It is embarrassing. I thought I had healed from this.
But God goes silent, and my thoughts begin to accuse me. “Imposter! Fake Christian! You crumble too easily. You still struggle with things God has already delivered you from”.
“Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” 1 Corinthians 10:12
In God’s silence, I am emptied of my folly, emptied of my pride.
In God’s silence, I come face to face with my own carnality, with the limitations of my flesh, my mind. I know God will never leave me nor forsake me (Deuteronomy 31:8),
but in His silence I feel abandoned.
Can these two things exist at once? These two feelings, these two thoughts, that play tug of war with my heart to the point of me wanting to rip it out.
“For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do”Galatians 5:17.
God will not abandon you, let that sink in. Let that truth find home in your being.
Why am I so sure of that? Because He Himself has said it, and,
“God is not man, that He should lie, or the son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?”- Numbers 23:19.
Sometimes when God is silent, that is the moment that He is closer than ever.
Have you ever loved something so much that all you could do was stare?
All you could do was to watch it, and let it be.
Like a baby learning to walk, or a flower beginning to bloom.
Do you believe me when I say that when God is silent, He is watching?
El Roi, my God who sees me.
Consider Job when he was pouring out his despairs endlessly into what seemed like a void. God’s eyes did not depart from him once. Rather, He watched, with a deep knowing, one that Job could not grasp.
If God did not abandon the Israelites in the wilderness, or Joseph in the pit, or Paul in those prison cells,
what makes you think He would abandon you?
You are the apple of His eye.
So if like me, you need to bellow, you need to shake, you need to cry, do so
and when you’re done, rest in God’s silence.
Be still.
This quiet is like no other, this quiet is a hug,
a warm embrace
that says, “I am here,
I will not leave you”.
His silence is not a weapon, it is not abandonment. His silence is the evidence that He is near.
selah.
Your support helps me keep writing. Thank you.
Beautiful 🤍
This was so refreshing