Life on the Ark

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

I have a love hate relationship with silence. My guess is most parents have this same relationship. I am sitting in silence right now because I can't turn my brain off and its the only time I can devote 100% to this computer screen, but even in the silence I have music in my earphones because complete silence is too much.

When Richard and Ellie left for St. Jude and it was just Noah and I here, I hated the silence. It was a constant reminder of what I was missing and just a little creepy because I was here alone.

After Ellie died I hated the silence again because I would get lost in my thoughts that hurt and were overwhelming, but loved the silence because the chaos of fighting cancer was over.

Through the journey with cancer and parenthood, I've learned to embrace silence. It's time that I have to myself. Time that I can think (I just wish it wasn't at 11 at night or 5 in the morning), time that I can pray, time that I can read. It's also a time I get easily distracted and lost in all kinds of random thoughts.

This weekend I had the rare opportunity to only have one kid at home all weekend, and she doesn't talk, so there was a lot of silence. As we've added more kids to our family, silence is something that doesn't really happen around here. Someone is constantly talking, dancing, crying, arguing, singing, needing something. They are only quiet when they sleep or if the TV is on....but even sometimes that doesn't do the trick. I enjoyed time to myself, and I really thought I'd get all caught up on this blog. I have two posts I've started and haven't finished. Every time I sat down and opened my computer, in silence, I found a way to avoid the silence and thoughts. Laundry would need to be done, Stori Anne would cry, I'd get hungry, decide to go through the toys because the kids were gone, attack Noah's legos....I even resorted to exercise. Anything to break the silence....the thing I had been looking forward to.

What's up with that?

As I sit here finally facing the silence, because tonight I can't escape it, I realize that I ran away from that silence because it contains so many emotions, thoughts, anxieties and sometimes being numb to all that is so much easier.

The past few weeks have been tough. SG graduated from preschool! So proud of her and her love of learning and school. It also made me realize none of my kids had "officially" graduated from preschool before. Noah got pulled out of preschool because we left for Memphis, Ellie never made it to preschool, and now at kid number 3, I'm sitting in my first preschool graduation.

Then Mother's Day rolled in, which doesn't really upset me, I'm still Ellie's mom and will always be. I have 5 children and don't get near as anxious to tell people that anymore. Richard got the girls and I these cute shirt, and we proudly rocked them to church, and I was fine with it all...until I saw this picture

She's missing, we rushed and didn't grab monkey. It was hot and they were not being so silent. From this day on, there's just been little moments that have hit me hard...and I've kinda been running from them.

So the silence I thought I was getting this past weekend I filled with noise. I indulged on episodes of Chuck of Amazon, watched sappy movies, crocheted, ate left overs all weekend (except the really awesome steak and shrimp dinner Richard made me). I didn't take the time to really use that silence to talk to God about all the emotions I'd been escaping, or come and finish the blog I had started because that would mean I'd have to be quiet and think. Finally tonight, I couldn't run from the silence any longer, I've had to sit in it and listen. Listen to God tell me to stop trying to drown out the silence, to sit in the silence and let Him get a hold of me in whatever way He wants.