in my silence

I have cried in the night during the silence of God. I have clung to His silence when answers seem obscure and unobtainable. I have bent over an abyss of darkness that echo's its laughter at my uncertainty, doubts, and reservations. Asking...pleading...where are you, Lord?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent.

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the praise of Israel. Psalm 22:1-3

For He is found when He is sought and when He is no longer sought He escapes us. He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled, we cease to listen, He ceases to speak, His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise. (Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)

Lord, what have I replaced with 'emotional noise' that isolates me from You? What threatens Your presence in my life?

In silence and hope are formed the strength of the Saints.
Isaiah 30:15