You Only Think God Is Silent

For as long as I can remember I could always hear God. Sometimes it was in the wind in the pine trees of the mountains. At other times, it was in the wind as it blew through my hair while I raced around a track on a bicycle. Most of the time it was in the Peace that was unexplainable, and there were those moments when I heard the still, small voice speak clearly to me. However, I had never known God to be silent, until the night of my thirty-eighth birthday, when my husband of almost 14 years did not come home from work. He was never late without calling. As I sat in the kitchen feeding our four month old baby and helping our second-grade daughter with her homework, I looked at the clock on the kitchen oven and realized he was late. For a brief moment, I felt God telling me I had become a widow. I did not want to listen, and for the first time in my memory, God seemed to be silent.
In the next hours and then days, we searched for a missing person. Later we found that my husband had been buried alive on a work site, and I experienced a mountain of emotions and activity. First chaos, then a fog of grief and confusion, anger, pain, questions, and then a profound realization—God certainly was not silent!
You Only Think God Is Silent speaks to the difficult question: When the inevitable crises of life occur, will you blame God as the perpetrator of the crisis, or will you see God as the One ready to sustain, provide, and transform you during this time? All of us will experience tragedy in the loss of a loved one, loss of health, loss of relationships, struggles in living with abuse, financial and career challenges, and the list goes on. No one will escape living without an experience of pain.
As people of faith, we need to develop a refined and pure understanding of God’s will prior to the fire and test of tragedy. We will all experience tragedy. We cannot allow the world or even well-meaning children of God, who have not refined their understanding of God’s will; to convince us that evil is God’s will. If you have not sought to establish a refined understanding of God’s will, this book is an opportunity to do just that. If you have that understanding, this book is an opportunity to affirm that.
We need to realize that a healthy relationship with God is synergistic in nature. The give and take generates a constant growth that will have moments of complete understanding as well as moments of question. We are not puppets on strings; we do have free will. Therefore, we will be struck by the actions of those who exercise their free will to live apart from God’s will. Tragedy generates anger and questions. God is not threatened by our anger and questions. God does not turn away from us or desert us. Additionally, we must choose to exercise our free will to allow God to sustain us.
We need to look at specific areas where we should expend energy in attempting to grow and become more like what God had in mind when He created us. Defining moments provide the opportunity to examine ourselves so that we can grow as Christians, maturing in our faith. I have seen this occur in the changes in my own self-perception, my definition of friendship, and even in my definition of parenting. Defining moments provide the opportunity to allow God to mature and complete our faith by changing our hearts and empowering us to forgive.

Tragedies will not define us. Rather, our response to tragedy becomes our defining moment. Tragedy, when placed in God’s hands can provide the opportunity for God to transform us. The closer we come to a mature and complete faith, the more boldly we can go where God sends us to complete His work as He leads.
When people look at my life and my circumstances, I do not want them to feel sorry for me or to pity me. Although each time I tell someone I am a widow, the response is “I’m sorry.” Rather, I want people to see me and see the miracle God has done in the lives of my children and in my life. I want them to see a living message in us that proclaims—God is good all the time! I want them to see happiness brought forth by God. I want them to see how good God is and what God can do. I want them to marvel at God! God has lifted me out of the muddiest, darkest, most pitiful, and sorrowful place I could have imagined. More than that, God has put a song in my heart. For each one of us, divine sacred joy is one choice away.