After losing my boy Adam, I’ve come to understand that silence isn’t empty — it is where healing begins. Read on to discover what I find in the silence and solitude of the river.
Early on after my boy Adam passed, I would often fish by myself late at night on a river a half mile into the woods, in the silence and the solitude. On my way out from the fishing spot, in the quiet black darkness, I would walk through a field, where the trees were sparse and the stars were many, and I would stop. I would pray to Jesus. I would talk with Adam. And I would yell my Adam‘s name once, as loud and as long as I possibly could, in the dark with no one around, just the universe above. I would listen to the echoes of my voice calling for him.
As time has gone on, I yell my Adam‘s name less often. I wonder why it was that I needed to yell his name so loud. Was it so that the whole world could hear me? Was it so that he could hear me? Was it because a father had lost his son and was desperately trying to find him?
I’ve come to understand that the best way to be close to Jesus, and to build this new and different relationship with my boy Adam, is not in the yelling. It is in the silence. I’ve come to understand that Jesus and my boy Adam speak in whispers, and silence is required to hear them. Not just quiet of sound but quiet in my mind, quiet in my heart, quiet in my soul. So that I can feel and hear what they’re telling me. So that I can feel the love they send me. So that I can experience the comfort and the peace that come with knowing I have no control over this situation, no matter how much I yell or cry or resist. This situation is in the hands of my higher power Jesus. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves Adam. And in the silence, I accept and I surrender.
I’ve come to understand that silence isn’t empty. It’s where healing begins.
Being on the water, standing in a river, fly fishing puts me somewhere I otherwise have trouble finding. Silence and solitude. There is no chaos. No traffic. No persistent thoughts hammering at my mind. There are no expectations from others. There is no past and no future. There is just me in God‘s beautiful nature. Here. Now. The sounds of wildlife around me, fish rising, rabbits and squirrels scurrying, ducks landing, birds calling, and sometimes, so beautifully, deer stepping cautiously and quietly.
In the silence of fly fishing, I find myself alone, but it’s the good kind of alone. Me minus the rest of this world. I have space to fill. And I fill it with what I need so desperately. I fill it with my higher power Jesus. I fill it with my boy Adam. Because Adam is there. Jesus is there. The past that haunts me isn’t there. And the future that overwhelms me isn’t there.
With every cast and every take and every fight and every release, with every drift and every mend, I am in a place that I have been blessed to find. I find it nowhere else on earth. I am on a river with a fly rod in my hand and space in my heart and soul. Silence and solitude. I find Jesus and I find my Adam. And I find peace and rest and I feel strengthened to head back out into the world to the people I love.