Silence...why are you so hard to handle?

There’s something I love about flying. I think it’s b/c it’s the stillness of it all. I’ve noticed it before when I’ve traveled, but for some reason this time the silence was amplified...and it wasn’t until about 30 minutes into the flight that I realized what was going on.

My tired mind began to drift as the muffled roar of the engines caused my head, propped up against the window of my exit-aisle seat, to vibrate. The TVs in the aisle were getting a work-out, but without paying for the cheap headphones, my attention was diverted elsewhere. I heard the stewardess as she politely asked passengers ahead of me what they wanted to quench their thirst in the dry cabin, but her voice seemed to sound like a whisper although she wasn’t whispering at all....that’s just the way voices sound in an airplane. By this point in the flight I had already browsed through the Delta travel magazine and its seat-back-pocket travel companion, “SkyMall“, and now had nothing to occupy my time but silence. Then it hit me....I’ve never felt so uncomfortable with the silence before in my life.

It was about this time that I began to question my motive for placing my carry-on bag in the storage bin above my aisle instead of under the seat in front of me because now I had nothing to do. Sure I had more leg room, but now I was confronted with the rest of my 2 hour flight with nothing to do...no ipod, no sudoku or crossword puzzle, no pen for doodling, NOTHING! Of course I could have asked my neighbor next to me to move so I could stand up to get my belongings from above our heads, but as I turned to ask him I realized he looked like he was occupied...it seemed with the way his head was dancing around in his deep sleep that he may have been dreaming about his one opportunity as an armless conductor of an orchestra, with only his head to communicate the tempo of the song to the musicians. Then I took it like a man and realized that every once-in-awhile you have to battle the silence.

It’s been so long before I’ve just been still. With everything going on around me, I haven’t found much time to not be occupied by something. Work. Global Missions. Friends. Family. TV. Radio. Billboards. They scream for my attention everywhere I go and seem almost unsatisfied when they don’t have it 100%. There’s a pull in all directions for what’s going to get my time each day. Like a game of tug-o-war, I feel the daily ‘to-do’ list pulling on my rope of attention while my Lord and Savior digs in his heals to fight back as I try to stay focused on His Word in my daily devotions. But it’s a struggle. Recently, with everything going on around me, I’ve just found it so hard to just ‘Be Still’.

So there I sat in the cabin of a lifeless airplane with nothing to do, and I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, no website to check, no pastor to annoy asking for money, no task for work that I could have been completing, no new magazine to read...just me and the Lord. It had been so long since I didn’t have many other things fighting for my time, that I didn’t even know how to pray without having to force my attention one way instead of another....for the first time in as long as I can remember, there was nothing else competing for my attention. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t know how to respond in that time of silence because there are so few times when we are forced to stay silent. But as I de-boarded the plane and walked along the cold path of the Wichita airport, my eyes bounced off the bright signs in the hall, my ears filled with people talking and speakers announcing the next departing flight, i felt my phone vibrate in my pocket demanding that I pick it up, and it was then I realized...I can’t wait to be back in the air. I can’t wait to be forced into silence once again.