Silent Retreat

Recently, I participated in a silent retreat as part of a spiritual direction training program. 

Honestly? I was skeptical. My husband died last year and I’ve been living with a lot of silence since then. I did not know how this silence would be any different or any better than the silence that already fills my home. 

It is been a year of all manner of adjustments. I used to talk and text with my husband at every opportunity. Shortly after he died I attended a Saturday workshop in a city 50 miles away. Ordinarily, this would have encroached on our time together. But this time, with nobody at home to miss me, to lament my being gone, I left the house without saying goodbye, without thanking him for understanding, without texting him about the construction traffic I got caught in, without calling him to say I had arrived early and was grabbing coffee at the coffeeshop next door, without checking in with him at every break—and sometimes when it was not even break. 

Sharing a life together can be a minefield at times—but it is a shared life. I miss it and I miss him. So, how was this silence supposed to be different? This past year I have been distracted and struggled to focus. I have been lost and I have felt imbalanced because my balance is gone. 

But, it was different. It was better. I feel like my reset button was pushed. The silent retreat pulled me out of myself. It called me back to the things that give me life.