I have a problem. I'm a curious person and I ask questions - likely too many probingly bold questions. I also assume that the person on the other end of my asking is bent toward an honest conversation.
Naiveté can be a weakness. Silence can, also, be a weakness.
Where can the crossroad take us when honesty meets the need for silence? Is it a simple 4-way stop? Or does the road beyond, we inevitably take, have immediate interchanges, calling for anything but simple?
Having three children six and under can cause me to ask certain questions.
Should I share my ice cream when my rationale is thin for eating ice cream?
Am I able to find time for a nap while one of the three is asleep and my wife also needs a nap?
Should I ask my child to be quiet and not overshare odd information when they are around other kids at school?
This next story could make you uncomfortable but I will do my best to set it up and make it as easy to swallow as possible. However, if you’ve made it this far, you’ll probably appreciate my desire to share this story, in light of the question that has taken me down the endeavor of this writing.
A few years back, my oldest daughter had been complaining of pain between her legs when she was in preschool; she was only four to five years of age. So my wife took her in to see our practitioner who suggested a swab test to rule out any infections, but the yeast won. However, before that was determined, my oldest got a bit nervous about the practitioner being the one who would take the sample with a large cotton swab on the end of a long stick in order to administer the exam – causing anyone to begin rattling their nerves from deep places of fear – and so my daughter requested mommy do it.
And so, through some shrieks of terror, the doc helped assist my wife, who, with great powers of patience and swabbability, performed the duty. And, that would have been the end of the story, once the yeast infection was detected and we were able to administer a form of medicine, our daughter’s health recovered. End of story. Please, why couldn’t it just have been the end of the story.
Until my wife received a call from my daughter’s preschool, who asked a few questions that put my wife in an uncomfortable position having heard that her oldest child told the entire class that mommy had put a stick up her butt. Naturally, the school wanted some answers. And I appreciate that, even if the information given was slighted just a bit. (I actually might have said this to Stephanie when she told me this story).
Thankfully, I don’t think any of the kids went home and told their parents. And yet, my wife and I share a disposition, toward this childish openness and honesty, that is concerned with her ability to share anything and everything that she sees or experiences at any given time. I appreciate that about the heart of my daughter. But I also feel a sense of shame. Why?
Not shame in her but shame in myself for not knowing what to do. How to protect her. How to make sure that she would be safe if she uttered her most unfiltered thought in the hope of gaining a friend who she wants to believe she can trust. Do I tell her to be silent instead of honest?
I can hear Jesus saying to me to let the children draw near.
Are we silent instead of honest sometimes? What are the times?
At what cost?
Does it become our exception to the rule more frequently over time that it becomes the rule? We just happened to wake up one day and were a quieter, and/or more opaque, person about how we truly feel or what we truly think or perhaps even what we truly understand because we risk being honest about feelings that make us and others uncomfortable.
How did I get here?
I feel like I’m asking too many questions.
But. I. Have. Questions!
I make decisions all the time.
Many decisions are seemingly small.
Compared to the least bit mundane, perhaps life-altering moments in life where you are faced with a choice that will mark our ground, I have many choices that don’t meet this criteria often.
Am I ready for those moments for which I will be making a larger decision?Have I practiced well with the smaller choices - what does that even mean?
Do I see my choices before me at all times?
What does God think about this or that?
Will I consider His opinion of the matter?
But somewhere my choices have reckoned that when I’m honest, the response is not one that is welcoming but rather uncomfortable. And while I feel I’m made for confrontation, no one likes being faced with it because of something I said or did out of nothing but innocent honest utterance.
I don’t think that our preference to be silent, or the practice of being silent, comes out of nowhere.
We’ve all likely shared something confidential with someone we thought we could trust but something changed in the relationship, slowly or with high speed. But why does that bother us toward silence in the future? Maybe we should be bothered to ask why we made them uncomfortable?
We’re afraid of what they think of us. Maybe we should just care about what they think.
Maybe both are the same but likely we need to learn how to hear what people think, even if that means to our shame, for the sake of loving them. And then learn how to be respectful, forgetting to point out why they should be ashamed of being uncomfortable with our innocent honesty.
Love them where they are and you will more likely invite them back to love. Leave them where they are by allowing silence to become the rule and love doesn’t get another log on the fire.
Where does our honesty need the end of our silence?
Perhaps we should consider God’s perspective on this. Jesus was likened to a sheep to the slaughter - one who is quiet and seemingly ready to be “silenced” with regard to their life continuing.
There are times where being silent is serving God’s purposes.
There are also times where being silent is serving the purpose of our fear getting the better of us.
How can we tell which compass we are following?
Likely, we will have moments to consider what predicament we find ourselves in when the price is either silence or boldness and the cost is life or death.
Likely, it’s the latter and the former, all at once, if it means that we are being honest.
by Jason Michael Chapel
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