The High Price of Quiet

Lent Reflection #5: Psalm 32

Apr 02, 2025

When I was six, I fell off a swing, landing hard, flat on my back. I felt deep pain in the moment of impact, but stayed silent. I imagine it was the shock and literally having the wind knocked out of me that kept me from crying out.

An hour later I sat on a gurney in a hospital Emergency Room. X-rays showed a broken collar bone. As a doctor pushed the bone back into place that’s when I finally cried out. Loudly screaming. The pain was excruciating. When he put a brace around my shoulders and tightened the strap, I cried out again. Louder and longer.

I was silent for the initial injury and unable to keep quiet as the healing process began.

Last April I quietly wandered among the Red Woods in Muir Woods National Forest.

I deliberately chose to use the lectionary for these weekly Lenten reflections. I wanted to make space for the Spirit to stir my creativity, rather than picking my favorite psalms and leaving little room for new insight and ideas.

Psalm 32invites me to examine my relationship with silence. To intentionally engage it and sit with it. Not force it or fill it. To allow whatever comes to mind to be. Letting memories and thoughts flow in and stay and go without judgement or correction. The broken collar bone came to me over and over.

Even at six years old I knew how to keep quiet. I was a chatty child, but not about things that mattered. I walked around quoting movie lines and song lyrics, but I was silent about the pain in my body and bones. And the reasons for it.

Commentary on Psalm 32 reminds us this is one of the “penitential psalms.” Teaching that “blessed are those who confess their sin.” And “grateful are they who are forgiven.” This psalm is often used to enforce the belief that our suffering is the result of our sin.

Disclaimer: I’m so not there anymore with these understandings of sin and they seem even harder to navigate during Lent. I really wrestled with finding the water in these words this week. Even the image of being spared from “rushing mighty water” in verse 6 didn’t feel right.

And then in the early morning silence verse 3 started to speak,

“For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.”

Silence is destructive and deadly. My body and my spirit were literally breaking. Not because I was refusing to confess, but because I was keeping silent about my story. My collar bone isn’t the only bone I’ve broken. And broken bones aren’t the only reason I’ve found myself in an Emergency Room.

The trees were speaking an ancient story.

I was hospitalized for the first time for depression when I was eighteen. The pressure of keeping quiet and staying silent about all the things I’d experienced in my childhood and youth had been building for years. The hopelessness and despair were all consuming. That first hospital stay was short. I was there for Easter. There was no resurrection. For the next nine years, life would be a revolving door of hospitals, medications, and therapies.

My second hospitalization, which began not long after the first, lasted for weeks rather than days. I didn’t recognize it then, but now I see that the seeds for healing were planted there. Specifically, by the realization that I had to talk about what had happened and was happening. My depression was feeding off my silence. Silence was safety. Silence was a cover for shame. Silence was based on fear. And silence was killing me. Staying silent I was wasting away.

On that extended second hospital stay, I started to speak. Words. Sentences. Memories. I journaled. I drew pictures. I painted. I named the abuse and the abusers. And then I went silent again. This was my life for nearly a decade. A continuous cycle of chaos and crisis, quiet and struggling to speak.

And then I was hospitalized for the last time. Most had given up on me. I’d pretty much given up on myself. As I neared two weeks in a locked psychiatric unit, medicated into oblivion, I had a vision of a different life. In the late hours of the night, I sat in a cold metal chair at a rusty metal desk. The room was dark, but there was a gentle glow from stars in the sky, or maybe it was lights in the parking lot, or maybe it was the flashlight of the attendant coming around every fifteen minutes. Whatever the source, I remember a light. I remember feeling a warm and gentle presence. I remember hearing someone call my name in the silence. Assuring me I wasn’t alone. That there was hope yet for a different future.

In the morning I met with the doctor. Of course, I didn’t tell him about my encounter in the night. There was little to no room for spirituality in the psych ward. Everything was diagnosed as insanity and treated with a pill or a shot.

But I did tell the doctor I wanted to go home. That I was ready to figure out how to live or die trying. He laughed. Told me I’d never really be well. And agreed to my wishes. Two days later, on Maundy Thursday I was discharged for the last time from a hospital. And as I hoped, was able to go to church on Easter. Resurrection was within reach.

My first and last hospitalizations have a connection to Lent and Holy Week and Easter. This year that feels more significant than ever. This year my awareness to the deadly effects of silence is heightened. My understanding of the healing possibilities of speaking our stories is pulsing through my veins. The power of words to get us out of the grave is crying out to be told.

Audre Lorde poetically and prophetically proclaimed that our silence will not protect us. I pushed back on these words for a long time. It was only when I really began to speak that I realized how badly silence had harmed me. It wasn’t a protection, but a temporary hiding place. And yes, in that hiding place, I escaped some really hard situations. But I also missed out on years of living and loving and learning.

There are similarities between my broken collar bone and my battered spirit. I was silent for a lot of years and since the healing began, I cannot keep quiet. I will never get those years back. And I write about them because staying silent about them keeps me weary and worn, wasting away and groaning. I write and I speak so that others might find the courage to move from the shadows and dare to break the silence.

For some of us, silence is so very personal. We fear being seen and heard and known. What will others think if they know about this? What will they do if they find out about that?

For others, silence is communal. We fear taking a stand or risking our safety. We worry about being too political. Or offending a friend or neighbor. What will happen if I speak against war? Tyranny? Transphobia? Or protest against injustice?

For many of us, silence is both. Silence will not protect any of us at the individual or collective level. What do you need to say? What does the world need to hear from you?

As I edit this, Cory Booker just ended speaking for more than twenty-five hours on the Senate floor in a country that has normalized silence and criminalized speech.

Looking up I found the strength to speak out.

My life began to transform the very first time I chose to not be silent. When I accepted an invitation to speak. The silence was broken with the help of others who created space for speaking and crying and who listened. My story began with one word.

My collar bone healed. I tried to save the brace, but you can imagine how horrible it smelled after weeks of wearing without a full shower.

My spirit continues to heal. Nineteen years since telling that doctor I was ready to figure out how to live or die trying, I’m living in ways I never imagined. Sharing my story for and with others who are trying to do the same. Speaking to a world that prefers our silence. Refusing to purchase phony protection for the high price of quiet.

Water-fully Yours,
Rebecca & 10 Camels

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