In the Closet: Essays on Keeping Secrets With God in a Not-So-Secret World
Dedication and Intro
In the Closet: Essays on Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world
For my mom, whose life whispers every chapter. For the backwards, upside-downers, and those struggling to suffer from humility in the proper place.
Introduction:
A wise person once said, As soon as you start talking about humility, humility slinks off into the shadows. I’m not sure to whom I can attribute it–the internet is inconclusive. Probably because I’ve misquoted. Or was it, “humility evaporates”? Surely I know enough to put it in a meme, slap it on a sunset or waterfall or some other exotic background photo, and post it to my feed. No one will question it or bother fact checking, I’m sure. Maybe Ann Voskamp or John Piper said it. Chesterton, Martin Luther, CS Lewis? Sorry, guys. Whoever said it, I’m sure it sounded infinitely more beautiful and wise in their voice, like a thousand baby angel coos. I’d be surprised if any of the Christian writers I admire (living or dead) weren’t too humble themselves to take credit for such a statement.
Being quiet is the same–as soon as you speak up, you run the risk of losing all authority on the subject.
In considering this concept, I have begun and quit and begun again this book. Who am I to write on silence in the age of loud? My qualifications are few; I am neither old or exceedingly sagacious. I do not have a following and I am unaware of any groupies that hang desperately to my way of thinking. My words aren’t flowery. I cannot spin allegories like Lewis and I’m no theologian. But I have been loud, I have been quiet, and I have found the most joy and meaningful life in the latter. Like Paul, I have learned the secret of being content. And not just in times of plenty or in want, but in times of provocation, when the world we live in will do anything to snag our attention and incite a response. I have learned the secret of being quiet, satisfied, while the blaring world awakens every dawn to outrage, surprise, conceit, and all things which causes one’s blood pressure to rise.
The Psalmist likens it to “a weaned child at its mother’s breast”–the ultimate calm–the kind you are well aware of if you’re a mother who has ever weaned a child before. A small child who can sit on your lap, free of distress, unperturbed, because the milk that once nourished her is no longer her primary, fundamental desire. She has moved on to real food, and she can enjoy the comfort of a parent’s lap, absent of that initial instinct to greedily suckle at a breast.
Now this is peace. It is desperately sought after, from the oldest to the youngest, from the greatest to the least.
What brought me back to eventually finishing off the manuscript was actually a despairing email from a dear friend.
It was Spring 2020, two months into the coronavirus pandemic and one week into riots over the death of George Floyd. We had both endured to the end of the school year, locked up in our homes with several small, needy children and half-spirited husbands who occasionally fretted over germs and work. Now we were still being encouraged to stay home and social distance ourselves for our own safety even as massive groups of protestors huddled in streets to proclaim justice and social freedom. Our eyes were trained to our devices. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone aired it. It was the media coverage, the tension, and nonstop feed of opinions and talk of systematic injustice that finally broke her.
“I am tired of it,” she said. She was weary to the bone of trying to be a solvent, agreeable online consumer. She could no longer absorb any more jargon from the arena forked out by purveyors of wokeness. The years and layers of keeping up with friends and family on social media had slowly, undetected, turned into a 24/7 round table of airing opinions. Voices that once remained safely within one’s mind now leaked, provoked and unprovoked, online. Escape seemed futile, and the thought now jutted into her conscience like sedimentary rock.
My friend was sensing the flippancy of knee jerk reactions, and she didn’t want to be a knee jerker, a one-upper. She admitted that, more than ever, do I wish I were off Instagram and Facebook, unaware of people’s political bents. We say so quickly what’s on our minds in comments and tweets, giving no one the benefit of the doubt.
This is what made me realize a need for this book. I’d been turning this idea over in my mind for a full year, like a rock in a tumbler, smoothing down the bumps and edges that made me crave solitude and peace. What exactly is it that makes us frantic and anxious around online platforms? Why is it so hard to break up with our ingrained, habitual use of devices? I don’t exactly want to write a book with the subtitle Why you can and should quit social media now–though I hope I might persuade you to consider that very option–but I am certainly worried most of us are caught in a spin cycle of passive-aggressive behavior that will, if untreated, lead us to ruin. For every person who thinks they are doing the world a favor by spitting out dogmatic, reactive, or unnecessary statements, there is a crowd of folk who wish they hadn’t, or at the very least, cannot unhear it. How to pave a path of despair and anxiety to the peace exhibited by a weaned child on her mother’s lap? Funny, the remedy isn’t found in the hushing of the loud, opportunistic voices, but in the cultivating of a quiet spirit. A heart that longs for peace. A mind at rest with God’s promises, no longer searching for satisfaction from fleeting propaganda and praise.
A body content with a simple life, free of envy and self-promotion.
Quiet.
Interestingly enough, there is something to be said about it.
Reader, I hope these words fall gently on your ears. I pray they give you courage to do what is right and noble, that you might see His commands not as burdensome, but as wonderful, beautiful tools to whittle a life worthy of Him.
The Average Pearl, August 2020
Colossians 3:3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
