Noise

We just got back from a vacation in New York City. The first time for all of us (husband, daughter-in-love, and grandson). It was a wonderful, experience-filled trip.

And it was noisy.

Even though we stayed in a relatively quiet area of the city (Upper West Side), there was noise, even a half block from Central Park.

The Uber ride from LaGuardia to the brownstone…noise.

The restaurant at dinner…noise. Times Square and Broadway…noise.

The subway….so much noise!!!

Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History….

Noise…noise…noise!

It was often distracting. Not only in the moment, but even afterwards, when we would get back to the quiet of our room, the continuous ringing in my ears was a distraction. I kept thinking how similar the distraction to my body and mind—the noise of the city—was to the mental and “busy” noise in my soul and spiritual life. And how often do I create that noise all on my own! I don’t want to be distracted from God. From the spiritual disciplines and practices, I know, are like oxygen to the heart of my soul.

I say that I don’t want to get distracted, and yet, right now, my life is nothing but distraction.

Today I saw a new counselor for the first time in almost 10 years. In preparation for the appointment, I was in my head a lot. Processing all the ‘whys’ of ending up in this space of recognizing I needed help. That, at minimum, I am not present in my own grief over my mother, and at most, I’m not present in any part of my life because I’m drowning in distraction.

And everyone has something to say about it.

It is funny how others see you and your family from the outside. They make judgment calls on the health of everyone based on how much you are involved, how extroverted you are out in public, the activities you participate in, and more. The masks we live behind when we are in front of people are the lenses through which they know us, or not. Sometimes, I think we try to fool ourselves with those same masks. Until they are no longer able to hide what we have been running from.

I fully recognize that my life, in so many ways, has been lived in the hills and valleys of lament. It is the land that God has called me into and the invitation that I unwillingly accepted. It is a land that, while filled with sorrow and pain, is undoubtedly also filled with hope and joy. Hope and joy that are beautiful in ways no one gets to experience without being in this land. I don’t ever want to lose sight of these truths, even when I’m digging through the mud and the mire of life's current circumstances.

The noise of tearing into yet another part of my faith foundation, navigating grief that I cannot reach because it doesn’t seem to be there and I don’t know why, reconciling relationships that cannot be repaired and relationships that were never mine to fix, recognizing the pain of childhood and processing what others would never be able to believe, and doing all of this in a season of learning my brain doesn’t function in a “normal” way – and none of the tricks and masking that I apparently, and unknowingly learned, now work in this season of life.

IT IS A LOT OF NOISE!!!

I found myself in Isaiah this week (why I’m here when I have a paper to write on Deuteronomy, I will never know. Procrastination at its finest!). I kept going back to 30:15. 

“For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said: 'You will be delivered by returning and resting; your strength will lie in quiet confidence. But you are not willing.’”

In the context of the whole chapter, God’s people needed help. They kept thinking they could do everything on their own. Fix everything in their own strength. Do what they want and get what they desire in their own power. God offered them deliverance, and they said ‘no.’

Let’s be honest – that noise that we create ourselves: that I create myself, the same solution is offered to me, to us, as was offered to Israel.

Alexander MacLaren (no relation…I don’t think), a Scottish Minister in the mid-1800s, in his Expositions of the Holy Scripture, whore about this passage:

“Confidence and rest in God bring safety and strength.

That is true in the lowest sense of 'saved,' and not less true in the highest. The condition of all our salvation from temporal as well as spiritual evils lies thus in the same thing—that we trust God.

No harm comes to us when we trust, because then God is with us, and works for us, and cares for us. So all departments of life are bound together by the one law. Trust is the condition of being 'saved.'

And not only so, but also trust is strength. God works for us; yes, but better than that, God works in us and fits us to work.

What powers we might be in the world! Trust should make us strong. To have confidence in God should bring us power to which all other power is as nothing. He who can feel that his foot is on the rock, how firm he should stand!

Best gives strength. The rest of faith doubles our forces. To be freed from anxious care makes a man much more likely to act vigorously and to judge wisely.

Stillness of soul, born of communion with God, makes us strong.

Stillness of soul, born of deliverance from our fears, makes us strong.

Here then is a golden chain—or shall we rather say a live wire?—whereof one end is bound to the Throne and the other encircles our poor hearts. Trust, so shall we be at rest and safe. Being at rest and safe, we shall be strong. If we link ourselves with God by faith, God will flash into us His mysterious energy, and His strength will be made perfect in our weakness.” [1]

So, in the midst of all this ‘noise’ I just wrote, these words are a reminder to me to rest, to trust, to be still and enter quiet.

Thank you, New York City, for this reminder.

[1] MacLaren, Alexander. Quiet and Confidence, https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/maclaren_alexander/expositions-of-holy-scripture/isaiah/quietness-and-confidence.cfm