Silence

I have an overly active mind.  At least that’s how it feels to me.  I’ve never had anyone else’s mind, so I don’t have a point of reference.  I just know that my own mind is always on the move and never settles down.  It’s always loud and it’s never quiet.

I’m bad at silence.

I barely remember my first several fights.  They kind of all blend into one event.  Everything was action versus reaction and pure adrenaline-fueled instinct.  I didn’t have the discipline or experience to slow things down, not in my mind and not in the fight.  Those days were pure chaos—shouting crowds, loud music, the sounds and coaches and corners, and, of course, that opponent facing me on the other side of the cage or ring.

Maybe that’s why it felt so foreign this time.  There was a sense of calm to me as I walked to the cage.  I could hear my walk-out music playing in the background—it had been my cue to start my journey to the place where my opponent and the referee were waiting.  It was probably my sixth or seventh trip into a cage or ring.  I was a little bit “seasoned” by now.  This trip felt different than all those before. I did all the things I was supposed to do—mouthguard, cup check and some Vaseline—then walked up the stairs and through that cage door.  The announcer was loud, the crowd was raucous.  I looked across that 26-foot cage where my opponent waited.  We made eye-contact and nodded slightly.  We both knew what was about to happen—an agreed contract of mutually agreed destruction.

I vaguely remembered the conversation I’d had with the doctor just a few hours earlier during fighter checks.   “Everyone’s blood pressure is really elevated right now,” he mentioned as he documented my results. 

“Well, yeah,” I replied.  “We’re all just a couple hours away from trying to kill each other in front of a couple thousand people.” A torrent of thoughts rolled through my brain in that moment—

Why am I doing this to myself?  Is there something wrong with me?

He looks tough—he looks a lot bigger than me.

Listen to your coaches this time, dummy.  Things don’t go well when you don’t.

Don’t embarrass yourself in front of your friends, team, and family. Make a good fight.

Is it too late to call this off?

I heard the metallic sound of the door closing.  The pin dropped.  Everyone had exited the cage, leaving just me, my opponent, and the referee.

Yes, it was too late to call this off.  I was committed.

And, in that instant, for a moment that felt like an eternity, everything fell silent.  The music stopped, the crowd hushed, and my mind strangely stopped.  All of the noise outside had gone silent on the inside.  It found an unfamiliar focus.  It was almost disconcerting—in the middle of all this, this is when my brain decided it was going to stop.  Here in the most chaotic of moments.

This is where I had found silence.

I am not good at silence.  I don’t know how to be still.

I tend to seek the chaos.  If I can’t find it I’ll create it.  I find security and safety in movement.  Maybe I’m like a shark.  Maybe I’ll die if I stop moving.

I don’t like the sound of my own mind.  It’s too loud.  It’s especially loud in silence, because there’s nothing to dampen the noise.

So, I avoid silence, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unknowingly.  I fill that vacuous void with as much noise as possible.  I surround myself with sound and I stay on the move. 

Most of the things I fill my time with are probably good things—there’s lots of stuff I’m doing for other people, contributing to society, pursuing the betterment of myself and trying to make the world a better place.  But sometimes—a lot of the time—I’m using them as distraction.  I’m using them as a sedative for my hyperactive mind.

I like actual noise.  It keeps the sound of myself at bay.  Many hours of my life are spent with a police radio in the background providing constant updates.  If I’m at home, there’s probably a TV, podcast, or some music playing.  I don’t even know it’s playing.  I just know it’s too quiet if something is not playing.

I don’t do well in silence.  It’s too loud in my mind.

I don’t like to hold still.  Motion keeps my mind moving.  When I stop my mind starts.  I don’t usually like what happens when that happens.  It’s a perceived silence.  I don’t like to stop.  My ADHD activates far too easily.  If I stop moving my brain will make up for the lack of momentum.  If I sit still my mind will almost immediately start screaming.  So, I keep moving, filling my calendar and looking for things to do and places to go.  It’s so easy to reach for my phone and start scrolling the world as it grows smaller in my hand.  It keeps the noise at bay.

Because I hate the silence.  I hate how it feels.  I hate how it sounds even more than I hate how it feels.

It’s too loud.

I might be addicted to noise.  I might be dependent on momentum.  There are times I almost dread what might be waiting for me when I stop and my mind starts.

That doesn’t mean I don’t know I need silence, and it doesn’t mean I don’t know I need to stop—at least, from time to time.  Some of the best things wait for me in silence.

It is strange—or, at least, interesting—to me that, all throughout God’s word (and the many translations), the idea of silence is synonymous with the concepts of rest, stillness, and peace. 

I don’t tend to find those things in silence, maybe because I’m doing silence wrong.

When a worn and weary—perhaps even, a depressed and anxious—Elijah begged for God to let him die, God came to him.  While Elijah stood before God, a great wind approached, but Elijah did not find God there.  Then the earth shook, but Elijah did not find God in the earthquake, either.  Next was a blazing fire, but God’s voice wasn’t found in that.  When God did speak to Elijah, He spoke in silence—in a tiny whisper.

And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper.  When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Suddenly, a voice came to him and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  (1 Kings 19:12-13) 

I am well aware that there is benefit in silence.  But that doesn’t mean it’s something I enjoy.  I don’t understand people who do.  My own mind is my greatest curse.  When I stop—when I hold still—the volume of my own thoughts reaches decibels that cannot be measured.

At its best, my mind becomes a pinball of nonsensical distraction.  It begins reaching to corners of my thought and thinking about the tasks we haven’t completed, or remembering our favorite movie lines, or thinking of that time one of my college buddies hid a watermelon in another buddy’s dorm room that he didn’t find for over a week—that was hilarious.

In those times my silent mind feels almost benevolent, close to pleasant, even.

But that’s not the typical design of my silent hyperactive mind.  In its natural state—in the place where it lives undistracted and undeterred—my mind becomes my own worst enemy.  It becomes a liability bent on my destruction.  Left to its own, my mind goes to war against me.  It fights against itself.  I start reenacting my regrets, perseverating on mistakes I’ve made, and obsessing on my shortcomings.

Guilt.  Rage.  Shame.  Anger.  Resentment.  Frustration.

Uncomfortable emotions and memories, they vie for prevalence in that silence of my mind, fighting for right of first refusal in a place that is only quiet on its surface.  I’ve been trying to run—trying to hide—from them behind the noise I create.  I’ve been trying the secret them underneath the cover of activity.  But in silence they are raw.

I become captivated in reliving the hurts others have visited upon me—past, present, and future. I visit the things that were said to me and fantasize the things that I should have said back, that I should have sent back. I find myself living in the moments and wishing that maybe I had said something meaner to exact a moment of revenge for hurtfulness that person gave to me. I shared part of me with them, I was vulnerable and they made me pay for it. I should have wounded them in return, but I held my tongue and my peace. Was I a fool?

I feel my heart quicken and my respirations increase as I find myself existing back in the moment when that person hurt me. There is no peace in my silence there is no stillness. I find my skin flushing with rage for something that occurred at a different time and in a different place. I tend to rewrite the events and make myself the victim and the hero, and sometimes that's true. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes I am exaggerating or downplaying my role. But, either way, there is no peace in that silence because this is a fight I don't know how to fight.

Then another intrusion into the silence…that time I severely failed someone I cared about.  Before even that thought can settle, another, this one the sadness I have been trying to keep at distance for that precious relationship I lost.  I have an excellent memory, and I starkly remember all the ways I’ve fallen short.  I find the silence becoming a haven for all of those negative recollections and concerns.  My internal silence is not internal silence. I am not finding peace and I am not finding stillness in this.

My silence is no silence at all.  My silence is a cacophony of every thought that I have held at bay.  They cross my consciousness one after the other.  It's like sparring on a crowded kickboxing mat. I'm doing my best to focus on the opponent in front of me, but all of the other fighters keep crossing my path and interfering with my focus. They circle in and out, they cut angles. I find myself focused on one negative structure only to be invaded by another one. So maybe I focus on both of them, or on one of them, or maybe I now have to focus on a new one before I can focus on all of them.  I find myself contending with every challenger in the room, unable to discern who my actual opponent might be.  There is no peace in my silence—there is no stillness. 

It is uncomfortable. It is frustrating and it is maddening. It is close to painful, but only because the power of my own silence is causing the pain. And I know that I can’t think my way out of this. So, I struggle. I struggle to reach for my phone…or not to. The Novocain of social media might put these thoughts to sleep. Or I look to even an amateur distraction like AM radio—I like talk radio and I like politics. It’s easy to justify by distraction.  I just want my silence—which is, in fact, no silence at all—to end. I want the turmoil to cease. And quite frequently I fail here. I reach for that phone, for that remote, or for that dial.  I get up and move myself someplace where I can throw myself into activity.  I seek that distraction and that numbing place.  It’ better than the pain of my silence.

But it’s not better.

There are times, times in the deafening silence of my own mind and in the overwhelming vacuum of my stillness—there are times when I choose not to disrupt the silence. I choose to embrace the uncomfortable thing I’ve not faced in some time. I don’t reach for my phone. I don’t look for the remote. I don’t turn the dial and I don’t find some place else to be so I can keep moving.

From time to time, I remember the key to these things. I remember that even in my silence, my eyes will show the way.

Keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God's throne. (Hebrews 12:2) 

God knows I can’t do it. He knows that He’s going to have to do all the heavy lifting and that I am incapable of doing the work myself. I can’t silence my silence. But He can.

Though but  pinprick of light, God’s light shines brightly in the chaos of my mind.  I look to it and I find a sort of center in my silence.  I’m not talking about the sort of silence where I empty my mind. That is a foolish sort of silence. I’m not looking to empty my mind and think about nothing because thinking about nothing is impossible. If I empty my mind I leave it undefended. All those thoughts can find a way back in and my enemy might establish a foothold.  My mind is both the enemy and the battleground and I will not leave it without sentries.  To empty one's mind is silly. That's not the same as silence. That's an invitation of ask the fights to go away. Even in silence, I have to fight. I have to go to war with these competing thoughts. They're the things that I've been ignoring for too long. They're the things that I haven't wanted to face. They are shadows of my silence, creeping in the corners waiting to establish an ambush.  So, I don’t empty my mind, and I can’t silence it.  Instead, I make a choice—a  necessarily deliberate choice.

“Stop your fighting—and know that I am God, exalted among the nations, exalted on the earth." (Psalms 46:10) 

I let my hyperactive mind—the mind that gives birth to words which give birth to power—stretch to find that gleaming light of God’s always-presence. It is only half a step on my behalf—probably even less. But God doesn’t require much of me.  He’s not asking me to step out as a requirement or demand.  He’s inviting me to move toward Him, even in the ravages of my silence. 

The cacophony becomes epiphany and the epiphany transforms into theophany.

There, in that quiet, He shows me what to grasp—a moment of gratitude, a recognition of the power of my God, the strangely difficult admission that a certain series of events that occurred recently could be nothing but a miracle—those thoughts find me only in silence. And they call me. And they give me peace. And then, maybe just for a moment, I’m able to sit in a sort of silence—a sort of companiable silence—with my God and creator.  In those moments of companiable silence with my God the voices and the condemnation of my own mind retreat. My silence is no longer uncomfortable but a place of refuge and regeneration. It is a place where I can find hope.

I think of all the lessons I have learned on the mats and I wish I could apply every one of them to my everyday life.  My best moments tend to come in the chaos when I can find some sort of silence, even if just in my own mind.  Once my overactive—hyperactive—mind has quieted, my physical presence might be able to follow.  It doesn’t always happen, but it does sometimes.  I’m still working on that.  I’ve got a ways to go, but I think I’m moving in the right direction.

I wasn’t sure how good he was—he was wearing a black belt just like me.  I’d been around long enough to know that there are any number of flavors of black belt.  I wasn’t sure if he was the sort of black belt I could compete with or not.  He had strong social media presence with lots of followers.  People knew who he was—very few knew who I was.  I wasn’t certain that I was worthy of being on the same mat with him.  But we were about to find out if I was, because the round timer chimed for us to start.

He was younger and far more athletic—most of them are.  He came after me with movement and mobility, moving his feet rapidly and grabbing for grips.  His every shift was executed with a dynamic sort of malice.  I felt like I was behind, trying to catch up with his steps to keep him from passing my guard.  It was a discord of action, and I felt myself a step behind.  My brain was racing faster than my heartrate as I tried to predict his next angle.  I found myself calculating his every possible next move, but there were too many of them.  There were too many possibilities for my mind to process.

In the commotion I found his sleeve and folded my fingers into a familiar  grip.  This felt familiar, soothing even.  He had come close to passing me on the outside, but I was able to post my foot into a spider-style attack, creating just enough space to prevent his pass.  He responded properly, circling his feet around and to the opposite side.  I transitioned with him, flowing along to new grips and a De La Riva guard.  He countered and I countered his counter.

He was still moving with abandon, attacking my guard with the same mobility as before.  But somewhere in that chaos, my mind had found a calm that it communicated to my body.  My hands and feet remembered each movement that we had spent a lifetime training into them.  I transitioned between guards, moving from Collar-Sleeve to De La Riva to Reverse De La Riva and back to Collar-Sleeve once more.  Then, there in the tranquility of that chaotic moment I found what I was looking for—for what I hadn’t known I was looking for until just that second.  There was an instant of extension and a little bridging of my hips where I almost accidentally found the omoplata.  I turned his elbow and his arm, forcing him to defend the submission so I was able to land in dominant side-control.  It had happened without intentional thought, only because the silence in my mind had calmed the turmoil in the moment.

He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Silence! Be still!" The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. (Mark 4:39)