A Quest for Silence or Simply Just Shut My Mouth?!

 Silence is defined as, the “absence of sound or noise.”

 Antonyms = quiet, peace, calm, hush, lull, stillness, quiescence, noiselessness

I am a person who loves details.  It’s what helped me all through school while growing up.  It enabled me to be on the newspaper staff, as well as the yearbook staff. I excelled in my English Comp classes, and poetry writing.  I love English (writing and talking)!  Details have helped me do book reviews for different organizations and authors.  It enables me to write articles for different newsletters. And in return, it also is what helped our three older daughters excel in their writing while growing up as homeschooled children. 

However, the question remains…Why can’t I “just keep quiet? Skip the details? “Shut up?!”  Why do I bog down my husband with detailed talking?  He truly hates listening to me talk. He only wants a shortened version, if that, of whatever I am talking about.  Perhaps my voice actually grinds on his nerves?  After 26½ years, you’d think I would remember this and have learned by now. I have nothing to say that interests him.  My life revolves around our children, grandchildren, home schooling, and church.  Once you’ve heard it all, you’ve heard it all.  He does different things daily at work.  Each and every day bring new challenges and opportunities.  He is an important asset to the company.  He sees other people all day.  He eats out with different people all during the week.  He has numerous phone calls with other adults during the day.  He is an incredibly smart man.  What am I, but a wife and mother?  YES, I am greatly blessed by this!!  But, I feel that to my husband, I am nothing more than a person “doing my job.”  “What I am doing, is what I am supposed to do (as a wife and mother).”  To him, it is a tedious job.  So, he tires of hearing about it.  Insistently, I go on, doing what I do, wondering why I can’t get this one specific thing right…”quietness.”  Why do I persist at trying to tell him about things?  I don’t know?  Sometimes, I believe, it is in hopes of peaking some interest from him in something, anything that I do, or say. 

So maybe I should look at what “Silence” is from a Biblical point of view…  "Silence" in spirituality is often a metaphor for inner stillness. A silent mind, freed from the surplus of thoughts and thought patterns, that are both a goal and an important step in spiritual development. Such "inner silence" is not about the absence of sound; instead, it is understood to bring one in contact with the divine, the ultimate reality, or one's own true self, one's divine nature. Many religious traditions imply the importance of being quiet and still in mind and spirit for transformative and integral spiritual growth to occur.

Maybe I should put my goal toward this kind of quietness?  To grow spiritually if not in other ways.

Ironically enough, these two phrases have become popular throughout the centuries;

          "Silence is a woman's best garment."

“Speech is silver; silence is golden”

   Perhaps I either need to work even harder to learn from these phrases, or if nothing else, it is time for society (and maybe my husband), to see women over-all as someone with worthy words to share, details to adhere to.