The Peace Pixie

I did not get a chance to tuck away last month but thankful I can this month. Okay just now typing the title I realized I have been doing these monthly silence/solitude retreats for 6 years!!! I started this practice at the beginning of Covid in 2020. Has it been every month? No way. Has it been several months out of the year? Yes ma’am.

I load up my Prius with the essentials. I pull up to the red light. My hubby pulls up beside me in his truck. He smiles and waves. I feel spoiled as I turn left heading to a quiet dinner at my fav Mexican restaurant. I get a break from being a teen taxi, sibling referee, meal planner, homework hostage negotiator, bedtime wrangler etc. My husband drives straight to drop my senior daughter and her friend to the powder puff game and then drop our youngest to his friend’s talent show. He will get a break tonight as he plays poker with friends and my mom is with our son for the night.

I know of no other mama who gets/takes this gift each month. I actually do not personally know another human who gives themself this gift. I only know of the authors whom I got this idea from: John Mark Comer and Ruth Haley Barton. This practice has been so restorative hence why I want to share this experience with others one day via a book so they too can reap the joys of this discipline.

I realized that for some, this reality of silence and solitude is their everyday and they wish it was not. Perhaps a widow/widower or a divorced empty nester etc. They get more silence and solitude than they want. But I do think there is something magical that happens when one purposefully seeks this out in a different location. The change of place and pace truly does bring out a renewed perspective. It is like a glorious reset button. All mistakes and stresses are not magically erased but there is new capacity to engage the life that you paused.

Change of place + change of pace = change of perspective. I know I got this formula from author Mark Batterson but which book, no clue. This has been one of those nuggets of wisdom that has stuck with me. For me I need to change things up each month. I need to break away from the daily grind. These resets allow me to return to this busy season with new eyes and new appreciation.

So this is what it practically looked like this time. I left about 5:20pm. I hoped into the pharmacy drive thru but after 10 minutes I realized this is not really something I want to spend this sacred time on. I had a dinner at Rosie’s. I drove to my friends house. She is gone and graciously shared her peaceful space. I went for a 2.5 mile around the neighborhood. I took a shower. Showering away from home is so different. No one needs me. No one is knocking at my door trying to ask me random questions that can wait seriously 5 minutes. There is no task to do after like load the dishwasher or start the bedtime process with my youngest. It is just me and it is fabulous. I then wrote a little. I used to only write during these monthly retreats. But I now write multiple times a month thanks to a habit tracker calendar I printed (thanks to Jon Acuff’s book, All it Takes is a Goal). I climbed into bed when I became sleepy. This alone is not a gift I give often to myself. I force myself to do other necessary tasks before allowing myself to sleep.

This morning I woke early thanks to a hot flash. I am in perimenopause full force. I got up and had breakfast and read some but climbed back in bed when I could not stop yawning. I slept a couple more hours. This never happens in normal everyday life. Sleeping, in general is crazy hard when my youngest is awake. He does not know how to walk quietly down the hall or how to shut a door without slamming and shaking the whole house. I told my husband that I need him to build me a nap hut. He thinks I am joking but I am dead serious. Take out the hot tub under this gazebo thing and put up walls and throw a couch in there. Okay where was I? Oh yes, my silent retreat. I wake and write some more. I go for a 2 mile walk just walking around her huge, beautiful backyard. I write some more. It is 2:35pm and I will go sit outside and enjoy the warmth of the sunshine and watch the bees and listen to the birds. I will likely head out in 2 hours and go through the pharmacy drive thru on my way home.

A huge benefit of these retreats is being away from my phone. I am not texting and checking texts all day long. I leave it tucked away.

I went out back to enjoy the quiet beauty some more but the craziest thing happens. So when I am inside, I can hear it is so quiet outside. But the minute I walk out the backdoor this crow caws relentlessly. Not only that, it follows me. It makes me wonder if it is a mama crow protecting her nest. As I lap the large backyard the crow follows me by landing on the top of the closest tree all the while cawing nonstop. The moment I walk back into the house, silence. So I tried an experiment. Mid walk I decided to sit down on a chair off the path. I wonder if I am still will the crow caw? Initially it keeps squawking away. But the longer I sit, the less it caws until it is silent. But the moment I reposition myself or put on/off my hoodie, it starts back up. So if I want to enjoy the quiet of the space I must be totally still.

This makes me think of the need of stillness in my life.The noise in my mind does not quiet down til my body literally quiets down. I am reminded of the image shared by Barton. Imagine a lidded mason jar full of river water and its sediment. Imagine me shaking this jar. That is life. Constant motion. But if I take the jar and set it on the counter and watch it, I slowly begin to see the swirling stop and the sediment begins to fall to the bottom. The murky water becomes clear and I can see through it. This is what stillness does, it brings clarity to our lives.

Silence is great. But is hard to be truly silent unless in solitude. Though there are the special people in our lives where we can just sit and be silent with and not feel an awkwardness. But in general silence is best experienced in solitude. One needs both silence and solitude to truly experience stillness. In my day to day life I forget how restorative all three of these are together. Author Dallas Willard had said that silence and solitude are the most important Christian disciplines yet also the least practiced. “Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, and loneliness. You will see that the world is not on your shoulders after all. Your will find yourself, and God will find you in new ways. Silence also brings Sabbath to you.” In solitude, we learn to “stop doing, stop producing, stop pleasing people, stop entertaining yourself, stop obsessing”. -Dallas Willard

All that to say, this crow though at first was annoying, reminded me that I need to be still to stop the noise.

Cost of this retreat:

Lodging: free thanks to a gracious friend

Meals: $10 dinner and $18 for groceries for dessert, breakfast, lunch and snacks

Total cost: $28 for a soul reset weekend retreat: priceless

I found this cool quotation that shares one reason of the many reasons why I love these retreats:

Grant me the ability to be alone,

May it be my custom to go outdoors each day

among the trees and grasses,

among all growing things

and there may I be alone,

and enter into prayer

to talk with the one

that I belong to.

-Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav