The Sound of Silence

Last night I began to watch a documentary about a deaf couple who decided on cochlear implants. They were both in their late 50s and had 3 grown children.

I sat mesmerized as I watched this couple speak about their childhoods - about growing up in a "hearing" world in the 1950s and their struggle to belong. The husband told a story about his first years in high school. Having spent a better part of his childhood at a school that used breakthrough techniques in speech-learning, he never realized he wasn't "normal" until high school when a girl offered him her phone number.

"What was I going to do with a phone number?"

The film continued, following them as they met with specialists, scheduled and underwent operations and joined the hearing world.

It was amazing and humbling. I wondered at their experience of something I take for granted every day. What it would be like for a blind man to see or a deaf man to hear.

And then I was reminded of Christ, who took us "out of darkness and into his marvelous light." Who took what was broken and made it whole. Who took mud and made a blind man see. Who filled the mute man's mouth with praise and the deaf man's ears with song.

But I've lived far too long with these gifts and taken Him for granted in the process. Like a toddler banging away at pots and pans, I've made so much noise that I've made His voice nothing more than a whisper. I've spent way too much time tuning into myself that I've burned an image of me (and not Him) on my heart's retinas.

Lord, help me... I need some doctorin'.