10:55 seems to be a good time of night for me....

it's 10:55 pm. (i wrote that while in mexico one night.) friday night. it rained today. it was yucky...but only while i had to walk to class. after that it was lovely. fall is lovely in tennessee. yellow, red, orange. hmmm....nice.
i have a lot of different emotions rushing in on me right now. but i can't seem to touch them. guilt, stress, weariness. guilt for wasting time today. stress for the amount of homework i have to do this weekend. weary because i'm worn out in every aspect of the word. i feel like ophelia in hamlet--"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts."--here's guilt for...here's stress for...here's weariness for...
i've always been very aware of my emotions but never knew what to do with them. now, more than ever, i "don't know what to do with them." so i read, or write, or dance, or watch tv, or play on the computer. bad things? no. not in and of themselves. but they take up my time for silence.
a good friend of mine was led to send me an email the other night. this is what she said to me:

promise me that if the game
gets
rained out, you will use that hour to be still. And I don't want the
"but I
could use that hour to get ahead on homework" excuse, or the "but now I
have
a free hour to zone out in a book or tv" excuse either. No excuses. You
need
to stop and sit still. It's changing my life and it has the power to
change
yours too.

i took her challenge. the games were rained out. so i promised that i would sit still for an hour. it scared me. silence scares me. God speaks in silence. i have been running from silence for quite some time. yes, i am exhausted, that is to be expected, but i didn't want silence either. i had no choice last night. i made a promise. i turned my lights off...lights seemed to kill any kind of quiet mood. i turned the lights out, except for this lighted air freshener in my room, laid down, and listened to the silence.
did i stand up a different person? no. were all my problems and fears whisked away? no. was it life-altering? no. at least not yet.
at this point of incoherence in my life, all i can do is faithfully take my times of silence and hope in jesus that he is to be found. he is. i know it---this is me trying to convince myself.
silence still hurts. it still scares me. i still don't know what to do with it. but without it, i am falling apart. jesus is to be found in silence. i know it! i just have to choose to be quiet.