I woke up begrudgingly at 9am got dressed and ready to go out and help the YWAM staff move into their office. The girls all congregated in the living room where Syd was playing a worship song playlist. We sat around the room and I plopped on my favorite spot, flush up against the right arm of the couch. We prayed a short prayer and Sydney said that she felt we were going to be spoken to so to declare any statments we felt led to, any words of encouragement, any praise. We listened in silence to the songs as they played, I closed my eyes and felt the overwhelming and very welcome presence of the spirit. I saw us in the down town square by the big statue handing our white flowers to women and telling them there are beautiful, I think most of us have a specific woman who is appointed to meet us there that day. I wanted to tell someone what I saw but initially it felt inappropriate and then it felt as though my tounge were glued to the roof of my mouth.
The worship continued, people sang and expounded exhaltations and praise, made proclimations over our team, but I sat eyes closed feeling flooded and content in very verbal silence. The songs on the play list began to speak of not keeping silent and some of the girls made proclimations that we were going to find and use our voices in the Ukraine and on the race, and I sat in silence, tounge stuck and heart full. I began to write down my initial vision because I wanted to share but I felt deep in me that speaking would break the connection at that point Cierra said she felt that we should make cards or flyers or something and go out to the square and give them to women and tell them that they are beautiful. At that point I felt like I was going to explode, I gestured wildly to confirm her statment but could not speak. I felt like no one noticed my gesturing so I finished writting and at the bottom of the statment wrote “I need to not talk right now”, and handed it to Cierra as worship finished, her eyes opened wide and she said “you wrote this before” and I nodded. I showed it to each girl and then we prepared to leave.
We walked down stairs and out the door and I still felt like I was not suppose to speak. After about 30 min of walking and meeting our contacts everyone had figured out that I wasn’t speaking. They kept asking me why and when I would stop my speech fast, but I could not explain the glued tounge without opening my mouth(believe me I tried). I served in emptying the storage, cleaning off the contents and moving them to the office in silence. Grocery shopping and the walk home, all in silence. I boiled eggs for logan and I while everyone talked in the living room and as I sat to eat my eggs the glue was gone, I didn’t even realize I was talking for a few minutes and no one else noticed till a few after that.
There are a few things that I noticed during my silence, first was the lack of neccessity of so much of what I say and second was the fact that the girls began to avoid interacting with me on serious things, at different points in the super market different girls came to talk to me and stopped in their tracks and said “oh you can’t talk”, I would motion to them to try anyway and every single time we were able to resolve the issue with a little creativity, this screamed to me. They dismissed me because I couldn’t talk, how many people are we dismissing everyday because they “can’t talk” because of the language barrier. Beyond the race how many people have we failed to reach out to, have we dismissed because we think there is some other kind of “can’t talk” barrier between us, education, race, social class, age, experience? I had a lot of conversations today, without speaking a word, and only one was so unclear that it was pointless, all the others bore fruit, food for thought.
