I wasn’t going to write today. I adore the Five Minute Friday community, and it feels like a hundred years since I really connected with the ones whom I affectionately deem to be my people, but I thought I’d try to join in today, because the truth is–even though I’m not talking much in this space, there are a great many things I want to say. (This post contains affiliate links.)

Today’s prompt is, Here.

Go.

It’s a hushed season I’ve stumbled into,not so much by my own desire but more out of an unexpected grieving. I’m finding comfort here, among my children, amid impromptu tea parties, and discussions about the garden this year, flowers or vegetables, neither–or both.

We’re a bit indecisive at the moment and when I think I might make some decisions the clouds gather and I just want to pull my littles in close and burn the computers and the TV and every other device that mocks the concept of living smaller, and more simply.

My word is heal this year, and as God stirs up the silt that’s settled long in my heart, I find the irritating scratching of the past to be too much for me some days. But here I am, sitting amid the chaos and beauty of a home always slightly messier than I’d like, reading news stories that tear your heart out and make me weep in the shower for their gruesomeness.

It’s because of the hurt that invades our lives that I’m quiet, not wanting to start conversations that lead to controversy, not wanting to blow hard and bang like a gong. Here is a sacred space, where I come to share and encourage, but this week, I’m coming up short.

But here it is–the reason I’m not really here right now: Because the words I have are not for sharing. Because everything is suddenly controversial and polarizing, and because I’ve been unwilling to lay myself on the altar of political correctness and say what I really think, and how I really feel.

Here I fear I’m becoming false, and shrouded, in a place where people rally for transparency only to tear the transparent down for their humanity, for their frailty, for their differing of opinions.

I’m still here, doing school in the backyard and sipping tea in the family room, praying over the phone with friends, and planning for a speaking engagement coming up. I’m here and hurting along with the rest of the world in some fashion or another.

But I’m not here, not letting the words loose like I want to. Not yet.

My friend Andi quoted Thomas Merton today, and I’m settling into this from him:

 This, then, is what it means to seek God perfectly…to rest in humility and to find peace in withdrawal from conflict and competition with other men; to turn aside from controversy and put away heavy loads of judgment and censorship and criticism and the whole burden of opinions that I have no obligation to carry… — Thomas Merton

Stop.

*This post is entirely unedited, as is the *rule * with Five Minute Friday Writes.