'Maybe I don't want to talk to you right now'

I am the sort of person who is happy to spend time with people in companionable silence. I don't need to talk. The thing that makes companionable silence different to just silence is that it doesn't become awkward. There is a recognition that just being there makes the difference and if there are silences it doesn't matter. There is space to enjoy your own thoughts and know that the other person doesn't mind. You don't need to fill the silence, because the silence makes the time together better. 

Now I have a bit more time in my life, because college has broken up for the summer, and the weather is unusually non-Lancashire (in that it is dry) I have been trying to walk more. Yesterday I walked to one of the most beautiful places I can walk to from my house (within a sensible length of time). I always forget how beautiful it is until I walk there. The last time I walked there was in deep snow, but this time it was in full blown summer, and although the same place it was very different. 

There are a few reasons why I walk. Firstly, it is good for me. Secondly, I enjoy it - it helps me stomp out some of the frustrations of the days and gives me time to reflect and thirdly because it is where God and me sometimes have a bit of a conversation - where God speaks to me most - maybe because I just have time to be. 

On the way to the most beautiful place I said to God, 'so tell me, what is it you want me to do next'. I felt him saying to me, 'maybe I don't want to talk to you right now, maybe I just want to walk with you as you enjoy your surroundings'.

There's always that moment when you think, 'well is that actually what God is saying?', yet this made me stop in my tracks. Sometimes we can be so busy looking to the next, we forget the beauty of what is around.... and because of that I walked through the most beautiful place slowly and looked up and around. 

The most beautiful place is a wood, a wood where there are dark places the sun doesn't get to, that even after the recent sunny days are still boggy, a wood where the sunlight shines through and dapples the path ahead, a wood where there are many different types of trees - some old, some new, but beautiful (trees are actually really quite beautiful). 

I noticed that a lot of the trees had branches that were twisting and turning as they were reaching to the light - like the growth in the canopy above changed year on year so the direction of growth of the trees changed year on year. The path of growth is always heading upwards but stops and changes direction from side to side when it needs to. Fixed on the light it knows where to go. 

I often wonder when we try and look at the light of God we look to the step ahead on the road we are going in first before we look at where we are now in relation to him. If we only look in the direction we know then we miss where God's light is actually shining. Yesterday God's light was shining on where I was right then - he wanted me to appreciate his beauty in creation, seeing how creation responds to him and the natural laws he has created. 

God and me in companionable silence. Sometimes that's all I need and I forget that as I wait for something profound. Right now I am determined to rest with him as I wait..... no awkward silence, just peace.