Silenced

Earlier this week I came across this post at Alece's blog.

"Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter."  Martin Luther King

I left Alece's post open in a tab in my browser for several days, looking at it, praying, thinking, remembering.

I was thinking about one specific conversation.  About a moment of being silenced.  About feeling like I couldn't safely express myself, and about the growing impact of silence, the sense of becoming invisible and unable to be heard.

I find myself wondering, sometimes, if there is a statute of limitations on hard things.  Especially hard things that involve people you care about.  How do you talk about them?  Do you talk of them at all?  Are vague references best?

I have no desire to lash out, really, but I've felt silenced and struggled with that.

Earlier this summer I sat outside a coffee shop called "Higher Ground" with a new friend, and, having shared some of the journey of the last number of years with her, she asked if there was anyone I'd been able to talk to about what I'd shared.

Her question stuck with me, probably because I'd felt so silenced.

My life is changing right now.  A new beginning, I suppose, or at least I pray it is.

And I've thought all week about the quote from Martin Luther King - about how something fundamentally ended in my life when that silence began to be imposed.

I'm grieving those things that were lost, and thankful for new beginnings.