The Day I Stopped Talking

I wore fear like a muzzle from the time I was a child.  I don't know all the reasons why, really, but I always had a nagging sense of being uninvited.  To protect myself, I chose, many times, not to speak.  If I didn't speak, you might not notice me and if you didn't notice me I could hide and if I could hide I felt safer and make sure that I wasn't too much trouble.  The thing is, I carried inside of me a world of color and imagination and when I felt, I felt REAL BIG and when I imagined,  I imagined a n i m a t e d l y.   I would look for a place to let it out of me, like a bubble coming out of my mouth, getting larger and LARGER.  And so, I would retreat to my bedroom, which became a stage for me to dream out loud.  I remember singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, when I knew my mother was outside hanging laundry and I could not be overheard.  That song seemed to understand me and made me cry.  It still does.

As I got older, I found a new friend, a friend I could trust to share my secrets, to help me speak.  I picked up a pen and words came out.  My writing hugged my heart and squeezed out of me what was bound and gagged.  I kept journals and wrote stories and maudlin teenage poems with trite phrases like "pipe dreams", when I wasn't sure what a pipe dream was.  But I wrote, laying the words out like diamonds on velvet.  The meanings of them, the sound of them, finding just the right one, mattered to me and kept me company.

I grew up and became a mama, six times over, and my world was a swirl of motion and noise and playdough and dandelions.  I used my hands to wipe up spilled juice and wipe off runny noses and hug my babies close.  But all was not as it should be in my world and parts of my heart were breaking and that haunting uninvited feeling crept back in, and so, when everyone was asleep at night, still I wrote, so that I could feel like I belonged someplace.  My words warmed me up when my soul felt cold.  I held nothing back and it kept my spirit from getting infected and helped me sort out what felt like puzzle pieces that made no sense.

One day, one really bad day,  those words were found and passed out to others, like a peddler selling wares.  My heart gasped and ran down the front of me and I felt my voice, the one that my writing gave me, go mute. The words that I'd heard in my head to navigate my life were gone.  My gift had become a weapon against me.  I thought I'd disappeared for good. I didn't write again for four years.  I stopped talking, really talking, to everyone.  No one would know my heart again, I vowed.  It was too violent of a business.

But God?  He had another idea.  He waited, like a gentleman does, until one day He knew I was ready, and He came and asked me to dance.  He told me that He loved me and held out His hand to me. No one had ever asked me to dance.  I lifted my eyes and decided to believe Him. That was the day my words came back and I could not contain them.  Except, this time, the words had Life to them and they pushed their way to the surface with a heartbeat, strong and vibrant.  These were His words, and He'd allowed them to be born in me.

Today, I have more words than I know what to do with and put them in containers full and running over.  I rush to write them down some days, they roll up on me so fast.  I still find myself in the middle of life sometimes and feeling something bigger than I can seem to figure out how to speak out loud,  so I sit down and quilt a covering of words, quiet and thoughtful.  I pick them careful, the shades of color mattering deeply, and pass them out to people, sometimes shyly, tentatively.  Sometimes, when fear wants to visit again, they are almost too quiet to hear and you have to lean in close.  My words are the deepest part of me, the biggest thing I have to give.  They are my heart on a plate.  And He gave them to me and has asked me to give them away.


"Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body."  Proverbs 16:24