When Love Seems Silent

The day was long and difficult.  It started early and jumped straight into chaos and the six kids and I were out the door and running.  Homeschool co-op classes, picking up a friend to come over, then on to the doctor's appointment.

I was getting her hearing checked.  She had been having more trouble with her schoolwork and always misunderstanding what we were saying to her.  I suspected an auditory processing problem but ruling out the hearing issue was the first step.  Since my other daughter has had so many learning issues it would seem that this was minor.

"Mariah, do you have trouble hearing what people say to you if they are standing behind you?" the doctor questioned.

She shakes her head yes.

"Do you need to look at people's faces in order to know what they are saying often?"

"Yes."

"Well, she failed her hearing test in both ears." The doctor says to me.  "She also failed her eye exam. We are going to make a referral to an audiologist and ENT.  And you need to get her into your eye doctor."

I'm sitting, waves of disbelief rolling over me.  How could I not have known this?

I'm her teacher, her mother.  I'm with her every day, all day.  How?

Then it started.  My mind playing back all the times she lay in the darkness of bedtime, asking me to pray for her again because she said I didn't pray.  Of course I prayed for you.  Didn't you hear me?  No, she didn't.  She would ask me to pray again and again.  But I already did it.  I thought she was being difficult, disobedient, wanting attention.

Then there were all the times in the car  that she would call from the back seat to ask me a question, and I would answer but with my face turned toward the road, she thought I had never responded.  And in those instances, when she thought I was ignoring her, when she thought I didn't hear, she didn't know what to do, so she would start to scream.  And scream.  She would scream and I didn't understand.  I didn't understand.  I labeled her "strong willed".  I labeled her defiant.  I didn't understand.  I couldn't understand.  I was spiritually deaf.

I am spiritually deaf.

Because right now, that's how I feel about God.

Why doesn't he hear me?  Why doesn't he answer?

And when my pleas are greeted with silence again, I'm the one screaming.

Screaming, "Where are you, don't you love me?  Why are you so long silent?"

But God, is always speaking.  Speaking truth, speaking love, speaking life.  And I am the one sitting in silence, deafness of my own making.  I'm the rebel, the broken, the empty.

But God, his father heart turned toward me, is always speaking, grace.

Speaking grace to this screaming one, flailing in anger, raging against this silence.

Everyone said she had an anger problem.  And none of us could understand why.

All along, she felt misunderstood.  And she was.

All long she misunderstood us.  And we were.

She thought she heard our silence and interpreted lovelessness.

But all along, we were speaking love, praying love, but all she heard was silence.

And God, He speaks grace, into all our moments.  Longing for us to have ears to hear it.  Longing for us to see it. 

So many years I cried, asking God why he gave me this strong-willed child, who screams and rages and I couldn't understand her world where my words were sucked straight out of air into nothingness.

And I prayed that someday He would use even all this broken, to bring Him glory. 

Years of struggle.  Years of pain.  Years of misunderstanding each other.  Years of silent anger.

God, He speaks grace, we are the ones with closed up ears.  We scream, we rage against this Father of love because we don't hear His speaking.  We interpret the silence as loveless.

But God always speaks love.  He is love.  Can we trust that even when all is silent that our good Father loves us still?

That His never-ending, always speaking- love, is for us and not against us?

"What, then, shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution, or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:  'For your sake we face death all day long, we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.'  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Romans 8:31-32, 35-39.

This girl who has heard the silence and felt unloved, she writes in chalk that God is grace.

His grace that pours love into our hearts, speaks love, and reminds us that He is for us, not against us.

She is finally hearing His love.