The First Year, Part V

Read Part I

Read Part II

Read Part III

Read Part IV

I wouldn’t ever have thought of myself as a person who talked through movies, not before that night. Maybe it’s true that we drift through life without ever seeing ourselves the way others see us—or at least, those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to have very strong guidance. Sitting and watching a movie without speaking was an exercise in constant frustration, and an amazing education. Even as I bit back comments, I wondered at how difficult it was, at how unaware I had been of my tendency to put my two cents in at every turn. For the first time, the restriction, though it chafed, felt valuable. In just 24 hours I’d learned something about myself that I’d never known, and something that bore attention.

When the movie ended, I got up and went to pray. It was just after 8:30, and I decided to stay on my knees until 10:00 and then get to bed early again. It had been a long time since I’d invested that much time in prayer, and I knew that it was going to be a rough stretch on my knees, but I was working hard to see this sentence as an opportunity, to make the best use of the quiet time it forced on me. And, of course, after dinner and the discovery I’d made during the movie, I had a lot to talk with the Lord about.

I thanked Him for Aaron, for the clarity I’d experienced during the movie, for the will to use the time in edifying ways. I asked Him to continue to show me hard truths, to give me the strength and the willingness to see and accept and address them, to guide Aaron as he guided me, and to reward him for showing me the truth. And then I simply listened.

In bed, I was much more at peace than I’d been the night before and I slept almost immediately, not even stirring when Aaron joined me an hour later.

The next few days were very much the same. I was more productive. I spent more time in prayer. I gradually conditioned myself to meet my husband’s eyes, not because I was no longer ashamed but because I was learning to open myself to him and share my shame. And yet, I often felt that I struggled against invisible bonds, often actually opened my mouth to make some insignificant comment before I caught myself and closed it again, often walked toward the computer before realizing it was off limits and turning away. Each time, I felt like a child squirming in time out.

Gradually, though, I began to notice something interesting. Almost everything that I had such a burning urge to say turned out, on closer examination, not to be particularly important. Some of it was unnecessarily sharp, altogether better left unsaid. The world, it turned out, wasn’t suffering in the least because the perpetual motion of my mouth had been stilled. Of course, that realization was more painful than the restriction. It forced me to think about what I would do when I was allowed to speak again. If I’d discovered that so much of my speech was unnecessary, unhelpful, even counterproductive, then I couldn’t in good conscience pick it right back up when the month was over. Would I have to examine everything that came to my mind for the rest of my life, screen it and decide what was truly worth sharing?

To be continued

The First Year, Part IV

Read Part I

Read Part II

Read Part III

He said grace and I bowed my head and followed in my heart. But again, when it was over I found myself reluctant to look up at him. I pushed food around my plate, not really eating, glad that I’d eaten lunch while I was alone. After a few minutes, he spoke.

“Tricia,” he said firmly, “this is necessary. You must accept it, not just grudgingly obey. I am trying to help you grow in faith and virtue and obedience, in an area where we both know that you struggle—and sometimes don’t even bother to struggle. I know that you can’t really feel that you’re submitting to me, and to God’s will for our marriage, when you refuse to look at me and obedience taxes you so that you can’t even eat.

“If you’re ashamed, that’s as it should be. But if you try to avoid humiliation by looking away, by hiding your shame from me, you aren’t accepting the full consequences of your actions, and you aren’t keeping yourself open to me. We must be open and honest with each other.”

I nearly spoke at that moment. I nearly burst out that I couldn’t very well be open and honest if he wouldn’t allow me to speak. He anticipated me and held up his hand.

“Don’t tell me that you can’t be open with me without speaking. You’re not trying. You’re hiding your eyes from me, protecting yourself from the shame you feel. Look at me.”

The command in his voice was clear. I looked straight into his eyes, but could hold them only for an instant. My own darted away, then back, as I struggled to open myself up to him. Tears poured from my eyes as I shifted them to him, away, and back. Finally, though my lips trembled and I cried openly, I met and held his gaze.

“That’s better,” he said. “You should be crying.”

Immediately my eyes shifted away.

“No,” he said firmly. “Face it.”

I looked back at him and held his eyes, silently acknowledging that I deserved the discipline and the shame. Silently acknowledging that I needed them, that I had much learning and growing to do.

He wiped my eyes and said gently, “Now, eat,” and I found that I was able. He talked a bit about his day at work and I listened, thankful for something to break the tension but having to remind myself again and again not to comment or respond. He left me to clean up the kitchen alone and it felt like a mercy. Not speaking is so much easier when there is no one around to hear.

As I was finishing, he came back to the kitchen doorway. “Come and watch this movie with me, if you like.” Again, I felt a rush of gratitude surely out of proportion to the invitation. A movie didn’t require talking. I could be normal for a couple of hours. Or so I thought.

To be continued

The First Year, Part III

Read Part I

Read Part II

If it is possible to feel anger and gratitude together, I felt them at that moment, and something else very surprising—a deep desire for him. I think that he knew of my desire, but he did not satisfy it. I think, though I have never asked him, that he wanted me to feel the pain of being unable to express my love and gratitude and anger and frustration and desire. I couldn’t tell him, and he didn’t give me the opportunity to show him. Not that night. Eventually, I fell asleep, and woke the next morning to fresh pain. We tend to forget, overnight; we tend to wake in the morning with a momentary expectation that everything is “normal”. I woke with that expectation and then felt it quickly dashed as I realized that I was not free even to say good morning to my husband. The reality of the rest of my day quickly followed: I would speak to no one, could not answer the phone, could not email, could not write in my journal. It might sound absurd that I wondered what I would do; of course I did many other things in the course of a day. Still, I felt oddly at loose ends for a person with so many restrictions.

When Aaron left for work I was bereft. I felt newly vulnerable without my speech and entirely alone without the freedom to email, instant message, write a letter, make a phone call. I had a thousand thoughts a day and no one to share them with—or rather, no freedom to share them. I remembered Mary kept all these things in her heart, but I didn’t really know what it meant. Things didn’t settle in my heart; they ripped around my body and mind like tiny tornadoes looking for a way out. I threw myself into work around the house and by noon had accomplished more than I did in a typical day, but felt no less on edge. Finally, I went to my knees and silently poured out my heart to God—the one form of expression I was allowed. That, of course, was no accident, but I didn’t know it then. In fact, I felt a bit like I was putting something over on my husband, like I’d found a secret release valve in “talking” to the Lord.

When Aaron came home, I wanted to go to him and kiss him, but the fact that I could not greet him verbally hung between us. I did not turn from my dinner preparations when he came into the room, and when he came and turned me toward him I did not kiss him. I only looked at him with tears in my eyes. He kissed me lightly on the forehead and went upstairs to change. As he did, it struck me full force that this would be our first silent dinner. How was one to sit across the table from someone for an entire meal and not speak to him?

To be continued

The First Year, Part II

Read Part I

“Why don’t you pray?” he asked softly.

Of course. I would certainly need strength in the days ahead, not only to hold my tongue but to learn the lessons intended and grow rather than getting mired in anger and frustration. I knelt and asked for the strength to submit to my husband, for the wisdom to learn the lessons he intended for me, for an open heart that would let me learn and grow from this discipline, for the will to stay the course. I asked for those things sincerely, but I was not at peace. The protests and frustrations still bounced inside me and when at last I rose and went downstairs to wash the dinner dishes and prepare for the morning, I did not meet Aaron’s eyes because I wanted to hide the anger in my own.

I found, as I became engaged in my work and the anger subsided slightly, that I could not meet his eyes. My pride ran strong in those days, and every time I looked at him and did not speak I was humiliated anew. I felt as if every glance transmitted a message, flashing neon over my head: I am not allowed to speak. I am being punished. I was so focused on the shame of being disciplined that I neglected entirely to be ashamed of my behavior, of the awful thing I’d said that had set this all in motion.

At 10:00, I headed upstairs again, glancing toward my husband and realizing that I was not even free to tell him that I was retiring. It was earlier than I usually went to bed, but I could find no place for myself in the silence and so I said my nighttime prayers and tried to settle myself for the night.

When Aaron came up the stairs an hour later, I still lay wide awake and rigid. I turned away from him when he entered the room, facing the wall. He said nothing until he’d undressed and slipped in beside me and then he said, “Don’t hide from me. Marriage must be honest. Whatever is in your eyes, I want to see it.”

I bit back a thousand retorts about the difficulty of being honest when one wasn’t allowed to speak, about how honesty required expression, but I rolled toward him. Still, I found myself unable to raise my eyes to his. I think that he expected to see anger, and he probably did, but much more: deep humiliation, uncertainty, something that couldn’t be named. He drew me close to him and I let myself relax against him, reminding myself that he was the husband I loved and trusted, who loved me, who certainly had seen me in shameful circumstances before and who was not responsible for my current suffering. The last reminder came as a bit of a shock, but I instantly saw the truth of it. He was only doing the job the Lord had given him, to guide me and correct me. My actions had brought us to this point. In fact, I realized suddenly, this would be hard for him as well. Not as hard as it would for me, of course, but he was paying a price for my impetuousness and disrespect as well, and paying it willingly in order to help me grow.

Continue to Part III

The First Year, Part I

I was a young bride, barely three months married, when my husband told me that I must be silent for a month. He meant, I think, to chastise my tendency to speak my mind at all costs. He only intended, I think, to teach me to hold my tongue when things were better left unsaid. But he is a wise man and his spirituality was far more mature than mine in those days, so perhaps he knew more than I realize. I have never asked him.

At first I anticipated only an inconvenience, but he quickly dispelled that idea. There would be no passing of notes and exchange of emails—he meant not only to punish my refusal to curb my tongue, but to break me of the drive to express myself at all costs. That meant not only literal silence but no notes, no email, no writing: not even journaling, which was my lifeline. I used to fill journals, write pages every night. Giving that up seemed as if it would be more painful, less possible, than a month of silence. But he allowed no argument. In fact, he allowed no response. The first thing he said to me that night was that I was to be silent for a month, beginning right at that moment.

Of course, I opened my mouth more than once to interrupt, to protest, to question. He was firm. He said that my resistance was only more evidence that I needed this discipline. He knew me well, though, and offered the explanations I would have demanded. I know now that he should not have had to, that I should simply have obeyed him, but on that night he was just beginning to teach me.

We must, he said, quell my drive to spill every thought that I had, to constantly pour out rather than hearing and receiving. Journaling, he said, was no different from speech in that regard—my unguarded comments might not harm anyone else in my little notebook, but my focus was still on the outflow, on the importance of my own views. Until I shifted that focus, he said, I would never learn to hold my tongue.

I certainly had trouble holding it then. I felt as if my arguments and protests would burst physically from my body, as if they were solid objects bouncing around inside me with nowhere to go. That feeling would become very familiar over the next few weeks; I often felt as if I were physically wrestling with something, or fighting a straightjacket.

He made me sit down that night and send out an email to everyone in my address book. Dear Friends and Family, it said, I am embarking on a sort of spiritual retreat. I plan to maintain silence for the next month, so I will not be responding to email or answering the telephone. Please keep me in your prayers during this time.

I smile now to think of how my hands trembled as I typed those words. I was awash in equal parts fear, humiliation, and gratitude that he had not required me to explain the reason for my “retreat”. When I stood up, knowing that I wouldn’t sit down at the keyboard that was nearly an extension of my fingers for a month, my legs were shaking. I stepped forward uncertainly, as if I couldn’t see the ground. I could not speak. I could not write. What was I to do? Aaron was gentle. He saw the concerns I was not free to speak.

Continue to Part II