I am attempting to come up with ideas about what to write about. I would love to be able to work from home and write, but that isn't where I am right now. I'm trying to figure out where to go from here. I have played around with ideas in the past, but nothing seemed to go anywhere with them. I would love to write about what it is like to be single in church culture, but that is a hot topic right now and I am not sure that is the way to go for me right now. I want to shed light on something that is less talked about maybe. I have a couple ideas that I am going to play around with for you all. Please let me know what you think of these ideas!
The thing that is resounding the loudest in my mind right now is the things that we don't say. Sometimes those things should be left unsaid, but other times they need to be said. I wrote a post a long time ago about what we leave unsaid via text message. I have since taken it down because it involved someone that wouldn't appreciate our conversation being public as well as the side notes that it included. But, it had a lot of truth to it too. Think about some of the text message conversations that you have with people and the things that you don't say. The times when you type something out and before you can hit send your internal filter says, "You may want to revise that" or "You cannot say that and keep the peace" or even "That will lead to conversations that are not honoring or kind so DELETE!" And you end up deleting the entire thing and rewriting something that hardly even resembles what you wanted to say, or not responding at all.
How about the times that you say nothing. Many times silence speaks louder than any words you could say. I have a "friend" (I don't really know how to define our relationship actually, you will understand when I explain) who almost never responds to my text messages, or facebook messages, or even when I try to talk to her in person sometimes. The volume of her feelings toward me are louder than if she yelled at me.
Another interesting situation that I find myself in a lot more than I would like is when a friend is telling me about something going on in their life and I want so badly to tell them what they should be doing instead of what they are actually doing. Speaking truth to someone is important, but many times I refrain from it because I have had people take it the wrong way and get really mad at me, or just take it badly in general and think that I am judging them or something. So I don't speak when I feel the Holy Spirit whispering something into my ear.
I so appreciate friends that will tell me the things that I need to hear, even when it is not fun to hear. I was recently talking to a guy friend about a stressful situation that I had found myself in. He responded in the most loving way possible by saying, "I know this may be hard to hear, but I think you need to hear it..." and laid out exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. It was not a fun conversation, but when I thought about it and heeded what he said I felt the stress literally peel off my shoulders and I felt more calm about the situation than I had in months.
Later when I thanked him for saying what he had said he was so relieved that I wasn't annoyed or mad at him for saying it. It made me realize that he is someone that I really can trust.
What else do you leave unsaid? Maybe it's a conversation that should be left unsaid. Or maybe it is something that you know you need to say but really don't want to.
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