My Soul was silenced on Memorial Day weekend.
I went to Sarita, Texas to find myself. Five miles off a dirt road and 1 hour south of Corpus Christi, I think I did. I will be honest, there was something I believe my soul needed, but I wasn’t all that certain I would find it in the deep south of Texas. Yet, I am a firm believer of how silence can calm and silence a soul so we can hear nothing but
what is out of sync.
Memorial Day weekend is usually quite a surreal weekend for me. On this holiday weekend I realized had taken quite a few retreats, in fact. One year,
( in 2003) I traveled to South Africa for three weeks and shaking hands with a royal dignitary by the name of Desmond Tutu. Another weekend,
(maybe 1998) I found myself placing rocks in the sand and praying to God for a new vision, because this was something that His people did in His word; later finding themselves in sacred places and building anew. Another year,
( in 2005) I found myself on Daytona beach, watching two children have fun writing these words in the sand:
“BE HAPPY”, upside down,… yet very pivotal for my spirit, because I had just returned from S. Africa, and I was named an African name that means:
”Make Me Happy.“
Wonderful memorials to build, indeed.So did I find this weekend to be any less extraordinary? Of course not. God spoke. He spoke in ways I had not expected Him to, and ways I had never noticed. He spoke as I silently ate, and mediated on His will for my life. He spoke, when deer crossed the lawn and waited as i walked and silently watched me. As they watched me, intensely wondering… I wondered…
why are they not afraid? … but then I realized
I was on their habitat, they were not in mine.
How do you silence your soul?
I believe you silence your soul by spending time with catching the rhythm of this world and finding out how you fit into it. The first three hours of my trip at the
Lebh Shomea House of Prayer,
I found myself with a lost phone.
God intended?
Of course. It was a lesson on pacing and on being too connected to everyone and everything else but God. Nothing surrounding me had been still enough to catch the rhythm of my heart.Once my heart slowed down, then so did my soul. The pace was so untouched and so content and so mild and completely undisturbed, that being with myself felt foreign!
( At first, my soul resisted being present and in tune with the trees and the deer and the nature, at first.)Then I realized I was in a very sacred space. and sacred spaces you do not take for granted. You adapt to them and LISTEN.Taking advantage of this place was much needed medicine for my soul. So my soul opened up and said
“YES”. Then, like clock-work, my phone was found, and the rhythm began again once I left the land.I didn’t leave the same, yet there was a longing for new place that involved
soul silence, within.
Selah.
