Don’t Say a Word
I was mute—in silence. I kept still, deprived of good, and my pain was grievous. Psalm 39:2 (Robert Alter translation)
Mute – You’re pummeled by the world. Your friends insult you. You are misunderstood. What do you do? Keep quiet, of course! No one likes a complainer! Don’t you know that it’s not nice to criticize someone else even if they deserve it? No, much better to just hold it all in, pretend that it doesn’t matter and make the best of things.
WRONG! “When we value being cool and in control over granting ourselves the freedom to unleash the passionate, goofy, heartfelt, and soulful expressions of who we are, we betray ourselves. When we consistently betray ourselves, we can expect to do the same to the people we love.”[1] Unless we give ourselves permission to express our true feelings, we cannot find the way to empathize with the true feelings of another. We will operate in the plastic world of controlled personality and discover that our relationships are as malleable as putty. There is nothing we can count on because we could not count on ourselves. “Being ‘in control’ isn’t always about the desire to manipulate situations, but often it’s about the need to manage perception.”[2]
Addicts know this truth even if they are incapable of acting on it. The last thing we can do is actually tell others how we really feel. That would expose how “out of control” we really are, and, of course, being out of control is a sure sign that there is something wrong with us. No one wants to be around a person who is essentially flawed. Therefore, no addict can risk speaking. Silence is the protective barrier that keeps an addict alive—and kills him. Betraying himself, he opts for counterfeit acceptance rather than projected rejection.
Perhaps that’s why the Psalms are the center of biblical healing. David expresses all the symptoms of a man who battles intense inner conflict. Yet he is willing to tell the world about his pain. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t genteel. But it’s real—to the point that we either stop reading and weep or we skip over the poetry that comes too close to home. Perhaps we secretly wish that we had the courage to talk about our imperfections, our anger, our sins, our failures—and triumphs, joys and celebrations. Perhaps we have discovered that it’s impossible to sing praises when we can’t shout curses.
“I was mute” is the Hebrew verb ‘alam. It is not primarily about lack of speech. It is about binding. To keep silent is to bind my soul to seclusion: the prison of personality paralysis. Silence is not my savior. It is my executioner. But at least I die quietly.
Topical Index: mute, ‘alam, bind, silence, Psalm 39:2
[1] Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, p. 123.
[2] Ibid., p. 121.
And how do we learn such toxic behavior? By being around people who aren’t ‘safe’ to shout to! Silence is the fruit of toxic shame. Stuffing feelings is what we learn when feelings are what is used against us. The world views feelings – the evidence of who we truly are – as weakness, and it is the world and the flesh that punish and annihilate the truth in every form that it is to be found – by using shame, primarily – but it does this in the name of its form of sick morality. We get confused when this ‘morality’ is pushed in the name of love, and most often it is to be found in the very center of what so many of us have experienced as religion. This is the dirty truth, and the evidence of just how far the world has learned to imitate heaven for its own nefarious purposes. Am I wrong? In many parts of our religions, societies and even whole countries, people can be punished or even killed for revealing how they really feel. On this planet, truth can be the one thing most likely to get you hurt or even destroyed; particularly the truth of who you really are. We are that afraid of each other! Witness the studied attempt in this country to present the First Amendment as the biggest impediment to fixing what ails our society, and you need look no further.
Shame is essential for a healthy community, true – and we are right to fear the psychopaths who do not experience shame as unsafe people who must be removed from our midst – but it can also be used by the loveless confederacies of society to generate some of the worst sickness the planet has ever seen. It is the world that punishes honesty, for honesty is the spokesperson of the truth, and the world holds truth – especially the truth of who we really are – to be its greatest enemy. There is nothing less the world wants to hear than how I really feel, for there is nothing the world fears more than who I really am.
Why DID David write? I have a theory – granted, it is just my own private take – that writing was his version of the silent scream. He could not afford to tell the toxic people around him how he truly felt, so he snuck around in the middle of the night and told it to his diary. Most of his best psalms were written during the many years he was being chased, but I bet they were only published after he became powerful enough that no one could punish him for telling the truth!
Thank you, everyone (and Skip most of all for providing the format) for being a community where I can say what I really feel. I consider it a rare privilege that is very fragile and not to be taken for granted in any way! I hope, in some small way to convey my biggest need – which is to know how everyone around me really feels – by attempting to be the change I need most. We were handed the commission of being witnesses – examples. I spent my years in the dungeon of silence. I hope to show that silence is not golden except when I am tempted to defend myself, for that is the only time I see that my Example ever kept His mouth shut. I pray He finds mine open at all those other times, for how else can the truth come out?
Being free to tell the truth – particularly the truth about who we are (that would be the commission He gave us of witness) – is a primary reason that Yeshua came to set us free. Free from what? Free from subscribing to each and every false representation of ‘love’ (that would be those confederacies – those populations of Others that we desire to impress or to appease) that holds power over us; either in the name of love or money or religion or family – wait, Yeshua told us that we had to forsake all these systems of the world to follow Him! Like Bcp said in an earlier post; we have to know Who our real Daddy is. That is because everybody else is just going to tell us to shut up; but, hey, when I am free, I don’t have to agree! Halleluah!
Cliff Notes to the above:
The world knows that I have to be free to be me, but at the same time it cannot afford the truth of who I am. The world punishes truth with toxic shame so this is why we are told to be in the world (not in altered states of reality) but not of it. Vulnerability, so essential to love, is only possible when I am free from all attempts to segue with the toxic communities of earth. I am only safe to express the truth when I have subscribed to the community not built with human hands. Lively stones are precisely noisy ones, but the safety that is so essential to voicing the truth of who I really am is only to be found when I have forsaken all other counterfeit communities for that Body who’s Head is in heaven, for then no one can cut me off! I only get to be me when I am not alone, for safety – so essential to that vulnerability – is only to be truly found in those numbers. May I always be found there (here). Halleluah!
Laurita, I, along with many in this community, am so thankful that you not only found your voice, but that you found US as well. Your prose on Skip’s poetry gives traction on the road to understanding. Blessings upon your house. In His love, Michael
Dear Michael/Arnella,
I love you, too! Your continuing saga is my praise to Yah for you both, and I am honored with being included in some small way. It gives me great things to pray about! May YHVH bless you and keep you both, and may His face shine upon you and give you both shalom while you are absent one from another.
Love in Him back, Laurita
Amen and Amen!!
Hi Skip, I am in total agreement with you on this TW. I think it is not only true about addicts, but also difficult relationships, such as abusive marriages or problematic child/parent relationships, especially mature,older child/parent relationships.
” Unless we give ourselves permission to express our true feelings, we cannot find the way to empathize with the true feelings of another.Silence is the protective barrier that keeps an addict alive—and kills him”
I would like to know, how I can relate this idea to 1 Peter 3:1 where it seems that respectful and pure behavior is more important than saying how you feel?
And of course you do get the few addicts who hide behind the talking or search a lifetime to find the real reason behind his/her pain( the excuse and blame), without ever confronting or getting rid of the addiction itself.
I’m guessing that Peter’s advice does not come without context. He is addressing people HE KNOWS, and their circumstances may require variations in the general scheme. It seems to me that these women have already exhausted the “here’s how I feel” effort, and Peter advises patience and purity rather than separation. But we can’t really know all the situation behind a personal letter, can we? So we do the best we can with the general themes of Scripture. The principle one is davaq, clinging, and it is the MAN who is responsible for this.
After my outburst on here yesterday, this Today’s Word soothes my soul. I woke up this morning sorry and condemned but thankful. Sorry and condemned because I was embarrassed I had responded to Brother Brett’s comment with such extreme emotion but thankful because God used it to expose another layer of hidden pain in my heart. Now more healing can come. So yes, sometimes speaking out is good for what ails us. The key is knowing when to unleash the dragon (obviously still working on that).
Shalom Sandy; sorry I’m late on this response but I was visiting all day to another hurting soul. I and we accept your apology it shows quick and true repentance, the righteous one will fall seven times in one day but they still get up. We do not want to cast our pearls among the swine .(the Lord doesn’t like pork very much ha.ha.) but a gentle rebuke is good every now and then for the word of God is good for rebuking teaching etc.. my brother-in-law often said as he would evangelize antique that we are all beggars showing each other how to get a cup of coffee, burgers in the sense that we owe no man anything except to love him as Christ loved us first shalom I wish you well on your journey to complete shalom nothing broken nothing lost your brother Brett
Mmmmmm, there is a need to be transparent, but there is the danger of being selfish also. The Hebrew community, and my place within it, versus the Greek individualistic approach?What you propose requires the walking of a fine line between selflessness in relationship and community, and a worldview that asserts the primacy of the individual.
I have two Sisters who, having been through secular counselling, are hellbent (if I can use the phrase) on assertion of their own needs, to the detriment of the Family unit.
Speaking the truth in love, is not enough! I must become less; more humble. I need to be confident enough, to show my soft underbelly. From there, in relationship, I may be able to make my needs understood. But I will also need to accept that my wants may not be met because they are not be in the best interests of my community.
I have recently read about goats: Two goats meeting on a narrow path above a river, they can’t pass because of the lack of space. Butting will cause them to both fall into the river and perish. ‘Instintively’ one goat will lie down and allow the other to walk over, therefore, they both survive.
The reason I highlight the word instinctively, is because it grates on me. We are told that human instinct is toward self-preservation, RUBBISH. This is purely social conditioning. We are not animals, and it would appear that some animals are more in the image of the creator than we are!
Oh my gosh…I am brought to a flood gate of tears…there is just such a dilemma of knowing where the lines of ‘being true to oneself’ and being ‘selfish’ are to be drawn….and crossed. So many things have gone thru my floodgates in the last several years…. rivers I never thought I would have to cross…wade thru or be almost drowned! Being myself? Throwing a tissy fit when I couldn’t stand anymore from a loved one? Standing my ground even when that ground was trembling in an earthquake? What did that get me? Four years of being being an outcast…not being able to send gifts, cards, texts or anything to my grandchildren…yeah…it’s a dilemma that’s for sure…when do you bite the end of your tongue off and when do you say “SEE ME” …. I don’t know….I guess it all depends on what you are willing to give up.
I love what Laurita says….I can embrace everything … – we have learned toxic behavior…we have embraced those around us where it is not safe to shout toxic behavior to, we shove those out of body feelings down, down, down and act like we are okie dokie…. Because, she is correct, if we let it out and let go it is looked upon as ‘weakness’ and it is punished. You are now looked upon as weak, selfish…UNSPIRITUAL. Well, dang it…I’m an emotional….heavily laden emotional….. ezer kenegdo (thank you Skip!) woman of the most High God. I have stuffed my feelings down for years so it is not used against me.
I think what we need here … after I come in from my back porch and screaming to the heavens… we need to LEARN how to express our feelings….so that people will not be backing off, backing out or feel threatened. Surely there is a way to express how I really feel in its totality so that the person its directed at can HEAR me!!! I want to be free to tell the truth…but I want to make sure that the person I’m telling it to…….can hear what I’m saying…
Hope that makes sense…..it’s been a long week.
Pam, I have this real suspicion that the only way we can get heard is Aretha’s word: R E S P E C T. How to project it as well as how to earn it. Respect is where it starts. I suspect a lot of us don’t respect ourselves very well; having never been really treated with it and so haven’t learned it, but if I don’t respect myself I literally have not given anybody else a whole lot of room to respect me even if they wanted to! Still working on this one…
Hello folks, I’ve really enjoyed the depth of understanding and sympathy being shared here. Sometimes we can’t be so transparent because we’ll get trampled on and taken advantage of.
We get trampled when we are weak. Being vulnerable is NOT being weak! There is a difference. It is NEEDS that make us weak, but who ever said that we were to depend on others FIRST for those? If we obeyed that directive to take all needs to the Throne first, then the THRONE would fulfill them through qualified agents of heaven’s choosing. It was when I thought that I had to depend on earthly sources because I did not trust heaven that I got into all the trouble. I confused my needs with my feelings. I am coming out of MAJOR confusion. Long time in Babylon.