Silence is golden, unless you have something you need to
say. The psalmist is wasting away one night at a time. You've been
there, or maybe you still are. You toss and turn waking every hour on the hour
as things said or left unsaid replay in your head on a continuous loop. A
sleepless night is followed by an endless day until back in bed it starts all
over again. Maybe you've also been in that place where sick and tired
of being sick and tired you come clean and tell the truth and determine to do
what you always knew you had to do but didn't have the will or the courage
or the desire or the help to begin the painful process. Of course that makes it
sound so simple when it is often only by bit and bridle and living “many are
the torments of the wicked” that one tells the truth and acknowledges sin to
oneself, to the Lord, and here’s the hard part, to someone else who loving us
will not abandon us to more of the same. It is why we are called to be in
community and if we weren't always putting on a happy face and
pretending as if everything is fine and I’m okay, really I am, we might take
advantage of what the church was always meant to be; a hiding place where no
one hides.
