The local Wendy's is near a big outlet mall located on a major interstate about five minutes from our little place in the country. And there we sat, watching a pair of geese fly low over the mall toward the green field that borders it.
That is a strange combination of sights. Store upon store crammed with all sorts of stuff that vehicle upon vehicle of people move down the interstate from Canada to purchase. Just a few feet away from that stuff and the pavement is a hay field appointed with a Spring flush of green grass and patrolled by a black cat.
I confessed to my dear husband that I felt distanced from him as well as my Savior. I had no idea why. He offered an apology for being somewhat preoccupied with fatigue lately. The stresses and responsibilities of life were taking their toll. After examining some other possibilities he replied, "I wish I had something to say to help."
I reached for his hand and said, "Sometimes just sitting in silence together is enough." As my hand touched his I felt my frozen heart begin to melt. And the question came, "what if the 'problem' was a new, heightened sensitivity to how my relationship with him and with God is interconnected?"
We lived so many of our thirty-three years married, but not engaged with each other's hearts. That has changed slowly over the last four years, thanks in part to the teaching of Larry Crabb, the moving of the Spirit within each of us, and a growing awareness of how deeply we desire to truly know each other.
So, that was our conversation as we gazed upon the mall and the meadow, the shopping and the silence. Together. That black cat, my dear husband and I, and our Heavenly Father.
At a place where time and eternity met, we went away changed.
"We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.” Mother Teresa
