Let It Sit.

The greatest lesson I have learned over the trials of the past year or so is this:

Just let it sit.  Just let it sit for a little while.

That incendiary email that showed up, unasked and unsought, to ruin your day?  That demands a respond with its high-handed nastiness?  Let it sit.

That person in the meeting who says the one thing meant to set you off, to undermine you and make you feel small and inferior?  The person whose smile says they await your immediate response?  Let it sit.

The major decision that needs to be made rightthissecond because people are waiting and the world is on hold?  Unless someone is literally, physically dying, let it sit.

The party that you don’t want to go to, but you sort of have to go to, but you wish you didn’t, but the person who invited you only asked because they thought you would?  Let it sit.

Let it sit!  Mercilessly squash your desire to say, to do, to act, to respond in some way.  Sit on your hands.  Shut your mouth.  Step away from the keyboard.  Do not, in any way, shape, or form, give into the compulsion that says you absolutely cannot wait a moment longer.

I have learned this the hard way as a person who feels compelled to respond in both personal and professional situations to literally everything that happens to me.  The combination of being loquacious and a complete control freak means I have always had a hard time relinquishing any opportunity to engage with—well, with whatever comes my way.

But as Scripture always gently reminds us, hasty reactions can serve as traps that snap shut on us.  Speaking out of emotion and immediacy can cause us to say things we regret, to make promises we can’t keep, to engage from reaction rather than careful thought or foresight.  Haste tempts us away from listening to the Holy Spirit or engaging with God; haste leads us quickly into sin.

And yet it’s so hard to let it sit.

I had a professor once in grad school who assigned, weekly, a truly tremendous amount of reading.  He knew that we didn’t manage it—knew, I think, that most of us skimmed a few chapters and shrugged off the rest.  The first few weeks of the class served as a lackluster seminar where his expansive discussion questions resulted in shallow, meandering answers that went nowhere and ended up miles away from the text in question.

And then one week he sat back and asked us a very specific question about a very specific text.

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room.  Clearly no one had read enough to provide a meaningful response.  Another student attempted to divert the discussion with an aside; the professor smiled.  “In a moment,” he said.  “But first, let’s address this question.”

The silence lingered.

In every other seminar I’ve had or class I’ve taken, the professor generally asks enough leading questions to get students back on track.  Or, alternatively, they supply an answer in exasperation and carry on.  Not this professor.  He was young and new to the classroom and just raw enough to try something none of us had ever encountered before: he sat back in his chair and folded his arms.  “I’m a big believer,” he told us, “in silence. We can learn a lot in silence.  So I’m content to let this silence just…flow…until an answer emerges.”

Fifteen solid minutes.

Fifteen solid minutes.

If you think that fifteen minutes of silence doesn’t seem that long, you’ve never sat, sweating through your shirt and quietly breaking out in hives, in a room of twelve other grad students who do not know the answer.  No one knew where to look.  No one knew what to do.  Textbooks were opened with aching quietness and then closed, helpless.  Every minute or so someone cleared their throat.

And our professor sat, watching us, calm and quiet as could be.  Utterly non-antagonistic, except that this silence couldn’t be considered anything but antagonistic.

It was the guy beside me who broke—who blurted out a clearly wrong, clearly made-up, clearly erroneous answer.  The professor corrected him; the discussion lurched back into being.  Every one of us sank back into our chairs, bewildered and horrified and relieved.

Silence can be powerful.  Letting something sit isn’t passive: it’s a careful, considered choice.  And it’s also, I have learned—much to my surprise—a worshipful act.   

This occurred to me recently as I received just the sort of high-handed email that usually prompts me to mad typing.  I read it, instead.  Sat back.  Felt all the feelings about the email: irritation at the sender, prickly frustration at the snippy little asides, the uncomfortable uncertainty of imposter syndrome raising its ugly head, the desperate desire to defend, justify, rationalize, explain.

So many of those feelings arise from me feeling like I ought to be the one in control.

The urgent need to respond, to act, to do, comes always from some deep internal understanding: I am the only one who can do this or I am the one who must do this.  I am the one who must correct the record.  I am the one who must defend me.  I am the one who must make the point.  I am the one who must show the other person they’re wrong.  I am the person who must win the argument.  I am the person who knows what matters.   

But that isn’t true.

God can defend me perfectly well if I need defending.  God can inspire favor for me in quarters where I require favor.  God can show other people they are wrong.  God tells me winning arguments is often not the point.  God knows everything going on. 

When I let something sit, I am acknowledging in my own small and imperfect way that my actions are not what keep the world moving on its axis.  That God can manage my own affairs without my input.  That there is nothing I can do that God cannot outdo.  That I benefit, always, by turning to God before myself.

And so I let things sit.

That doesn’t mean I’m passive or I never react.  Sometimes after I let something sit I do send the email, or say the thing, or make the point.  Sometimes I don’t.  It depends on what God has to say to me, and what my own reflections are after the initial flush of feeling has died down. 

But letting things sit always reminds me of who I am.  And it reminds me of who God is.  And whenever I reorient myself in such a way, my response always comes from the right place and the right understanding.

I don’t know if there’s tumult in your life lately.  But if there is, and you’re called on for response, maybe let it sit for a little while.  Silence is powerful, and its own gentle teacher: we emerge from it more grounded than God than ourselves.