I am kind of a word nerd. So when I sat down to write my post for today, I grabbed the dictionary to find the definition of quiet. I thought if I am writing about it for 31 days, I should probably know what it really means, right? When I think of quiet the first thing that comes to mind is “without noise.” A quiet child. A quiet room. But there is much more to this 5 letter word than a hushed child.
The word quiet belongs to many parts of speech; noun, adjective, adverb, verb, each with it’s own definition, but all similar in nature. Then there is the transitive verb. What is a transitive verb you ask? We all know verbs are action words, well a transitive verb is an action word that has an object that specifically receives that action. Confused?
Read this sentence…
I baked some cookies.
Now let’s break it down…
“I” :: pronoun, the subject
“baked” :: transitive verb, the action
“cookies” noun, the object receiving the action.
I performed the action of baking. Baking what? What received the action? The cookies. You can see this in sentences such as I played the piano. She smelled the roses. He hit the ball.
See how that works? Transitive verbs always have an object receiving an action.
Ok, grammar lesson done.
Quiet
transitive verb : to make secure by freeing from dispute or question (merriam-webster)
In all honesty our home and our lives always seem to be in a state of chaos. There are not many days that we make it through without a sensory meltdown, migraine, or some other form of misread behavior. Trips to the grocery store can take hours. and you count on the 3 year old screaming, climbing out of the cart, or throwing items from the cart. The 12 year old does everything she can to calm her. She wants everything to run smooth and everyone to be happy. But she can’t control it. And many times her senses overwhelm and she flees in frustration. Inside our house, there is always toys to be found in every nook and cranny, dishes in the sink, laundry waiting to be transformed. The vacuum cleaner stands by in the living room just waiting to be called to duty. It hasn’t seen its home in the closet for well over a year.
This is our normal. This is our everyday chaos. This is where we long for quiet.
But today, I realized there is something greater that binds us in shackles while it robs us of our quiet. We let the words of others seep into our lives. We listen to their silent judgment. They make us question our decisions. But these are our children. They have special needs. Those needs can create chaos, but they also crate beauty. How can they not know the beauty that is found in our chaos? Because to put it mildly, our chaos upsets their quiet.
Whether it is someone who is a part of our lives or the strangers we see in public places, each one of them has an opinion of what really is going on in our lives. It doesn’t matter if it is whispered words of what they would do different, stares of disapproval and shaking heads at the checkout counter, it is all the same. Their opinions. To them it seems our children are spoiled and misbehaving, and we have no control of them. But they are not. Neither intend to be defiant, be disruptive, or meltdown. Don’t get me wrong they both have the natural instinct, as does every child, to push their boundaries, but in most instances their bodies are frustrated. They cannot communicate what they are feeling because they don’t understand what is causing the frustration and the result is not pretty.
We allow these words and actions to seep into our minds, they strike us deep and cause pain and anxiety. We dwell on them much too long. We begin to question our decisions, our doctors and our therapies, our instincts. We feel the grip of the shackles as they tighten and we fight to be free. So why do we do it? Why do we let these people cause us much turmoil? Because we want them to see us. We want to know that they support us. We want them to understand us.
But this is where that transitive form of quiet comes in – to make secure by freeing from dispute or questions. Does this not infer that we could be free from the anxiety and the chaos it creates? If we stood firm in our convictions and choices; and remember that every decision and action was not without much thought, research and prayer, could we not live out the transitive verb of quiet?
To make secure (calm the anxiety) by freeing (breaking the shackles) from dispute or question (the comments, looks and stares)? It is a choice. I imagine what that looks like…
We quieted the chaos by believing in ourselves. Believing God. And there was freedom.
This post feels far from being finished. But learned this week about releasing and that is exactly what I am going to do.
This is day three of 31 one days of finding quiet in the chaos. To read all of the posts in this series click here.
