on silence

I used to love being busy. And I was. I would talk about my business to my friends and look in my planner several times a day, comforted by it being packed. It gave me an adrenaline kick to have a thousand things on at the same time. And I pulled it off. I always landed on my feet. I was actually pretty good at living my life. Friends, family, studies, church, and part time job – I ruled it all.

Things have changed quite a bit for me over the last four months. I have a different life now. I uprooted myself from my home in Oslo, from my family, from my friends, from my church, from my part time job, from my studies, from my engagements in boards and organizations, from committees and everything that filled my everyday life. And I moved somewhere else. I moved away from safety to a place where no one knew me. I moved to a place where my organizational skills could not come to much use, to a place where my knowledge on Norwegian contemporary authors counted for nothing. To a place where my stands on popular culture, my sense of fashion and taste in music would be questioned and challenged, not conformed. I uprooted myself and landed in Regent Park, Toronto.

Completely estranged from what I knew, I was forced to take a closer look at my life. Things I knew to be true were questioned. Things I took for granted was taken away. My new situation shed light on what I thought was important to me. Many things where put into perspective – a different perspective. And I was forced to slow down… At start I was not impressed with the pace in things where going. I could be so much more effective than this! (If I just got to do things my way). Did people not know what I was capable of? I was eager to get going. I wanted to get my hands dirty. I wanted it all to be challenging and hard and difficult and messy. And busy, very busy. The silence I found in between my scheduled hours was not what I sought. Although I soon adjusted, and found that I could use the silent hours to study and pray (something I genuinely wanted –really!), I was not very happy about what I found in the quietness of my heart. I discovered that silence is a discipline and that I didn’t practice it. And I discovered something my mind already knew -that what God wants is not my busy schedule, but my heart.

It seems as though I am a slow learner. It takes me some time to really understand what I know to be true. It is as if the information uses a long time to travel from my mind and settle into my heart. I believe that God needed to drastically remove me from my “world”, because I thought I knew so much and was doing so great at living my life. I could not run away from him in Toronto. Not knowing the city, the neighborhood or anyone here, there was nowhere to go, no friends to see and no work to be done. Being alienated like that there is really only one place to go – inwards. What I’ve learned so far is not really what I expected. I have learned way more about myself than anything else. And that experience is very humbling. I think learning about your self usually is a humbling process for anyone who experiences it.

I still cannot believe the irony of what Ignite has learned me so far. God had to take me to a boiling big city, to a broken neighborhood, to a chaotic mess of living with six other people to teach me about silence!

My schedule has gradually gotten busier. And it is safe to say that I enjoy that. I still like to do a lot of different kinds of work and to juggle between projects. And (still trying to be humble) I think I am rather good at it. I still like business. But in order to be able to do anything I need to know my foundation (that is grace, and the fact that I really can’t do anything). In order to serve, I need to know whom I’m serving. And in order to love, I need to know that I am loved.