The Quiet Stranger Within

Eventually one has to find a quietness in the soul. The quiet room where one retires to when the madness of the world swirls around throwing its debris. Eventually one has to find the counsel of the Holy Spirit and listen to His promptings, urges and utterances. In the quiet places of the soul, the places unencumbered by bitterness and the hurt done to us by others.

There has to be a piece of yourself freed from the experiences of the the heart. The quiet stranger who has witnessed your journey, but who isn’t affected by the pain of it. The kind stranger who has empathy, but who will not agree to violence or revenge. He will talk you out of throwing rocks through an ex-therapists’s window. He will advise you not to key his gold Saturn, even when your hearts screams to hurt him the way he hurt you. But the kindly gentleman tells you there is a better way to deal with hostility and anger. So you concede to the promptings and advice of the kind stranger in the quiet room inside yourself.

I’ve wanted to do so many things that were unethical, ill-advised, and destructive. I’ve wanted to right my own wrongs to make myself feel better. I’ve wanted to hurt others the way they had hurt me. But I let myself take counsel with the kind one inside, whose gentle spirit calms my own tumultous one.

There have been times I’ve wanted to jump out of moving cars (sometimes I have), punch someone next to me, swear at those around me, and tell them off. But what good would that do? I would begin to rip the fabric of my own life by such destructive attitudes and feelings.

Yes, I have ripped my flesh to ribbons in response to holding it all in, against the advice of the kindly spirit I must add. When I feel loneliness eat me alive, the quiet stranger fills me with an incalculable warmth I cannot measure in human terms. He hides my tears inside His big heart, remembering my pain.

He says wonderful things to me. He tells me I am beautiful and unique, and worth so much even, especially when I feel worthless. When the tears rush from my eyes at such rapid speed, and my heart aches from quiet desperation, He tells me, “It will be alright, we will work the pain out together.” When I am walking struggling, and the heat is so unforgiving , and the sweat rushes out of me like blood from a huge gash, He wipes the anger and frustration from my brow. He tells me, "It’s okay to cry, and it’s alright to feel the pain and sadness. He tells me He has felt loneliness, sadness and hurt crush Him too. "He felt the terrible pain from the thorns pushed down His own brow. He knows what it’s like to be abandoned by those we love. He has been made to feel worthless and left for dead. Everything I have wept over, He wept over first.

Then the quietness fills me with a peace which surpasses all understanding and hope clings to me as a second skin, and I no longer feel the need to hurt somebody. I don’t need open flesh to console me. I don’t need to jump out of a moving car, and possibly be runned over in the process. My rage has dissolved into the moments the kind stranger and I sit within the quietness of eternity. He wipes my tears, and I smile like a child.

Explore the quiet places inside and ask the Lord to come and live inside the emptiness of your soul.

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