Alone, at last, she sighed. The crowds and noise were a constant assault on her ears. She couldn’t wait to come home to her silence. As she entered her tiny apartment, closing the door behind her, she felt safe. She put the kettle on, changed her clothes and fed her fish. She did not own a television, nor did she have a phone. She sat down on her sofa, drank her tea and listened to the silence of her world as she watched her fish swim peacefully in their tank. She breathed. Slowly, deeply. For some, living alone in quiet and solitude is an unthinkable torture. Not for her, she relished her aloneness. Painfully shy since her earliest memories, being among people made her nervous. She spoke very little.

Coming from a large family with ten siblings, she was always considered the eccentric one. Not the youngest and not the oldest, she shared a bedroom with three of her sisters sleeping on one of the bottom bunks of two bunk beds. Privacy was rare, silence unheard of. She would lay awake in her bed at night, breathing in the rare silence of the house as everyone slept, imagining that she was alone in the world. She loved the nights. It was her salvation. During the day she felt an assault on her senses. There was constant noise, constant yelling and shouting. Even at the family dinner table, there was always noise, always chaos.

 Her brothers and sisters mostly ignored her when she wasn’t the object of their teasing. Her father didn’t understand her need for solitude either and poked fun at her whenever he could. Her worried mother always tried to run interference for her, begging him to leave her be. But he never really understood her, never connected with her, never tried to get to know her. There were just so many children to tend to. Her frustrated father labeled her slow, never expecting her to amount to anything.

It was ironic that years later, she would be the one to lovingly tend to him during his final days. She made things peaceful for him. And perhaps, she hoped, he finally understood how wonderful her silent world was. She thought she saw it in his eyes as he looked at her from his sick bed. She just knew she felt an understanding that passed silently between them. And when he did finally pass away on a quiet winter morning, she held his hand until the warmth of his body left him, envying his eternal peace and quiet.

It was that same irony of fate that brought her to a place in life, where she found her only employment opportunity at the local Wal-Mart. The noise, the chaos, the people; she couldn’t hear her inner voice over the noise of the crowds. She felt assaulted. It made her nervous. She fought hard against her instincts to run each and every day. It did her no good to give into her impulse to isolate. She had to earn a living.

And yet, as it is said, all things happen for a reason. Fate continually reminds us of that.  And as fate would have it, on one particularly noisy and busy day, she nervously backed into a display of cereal boxes, knocking them over while trying to cover her ears to the assault on her psyche. As she anxiously picked up the boxes, trying to restack the display before her boss began to yell, there he was. He bent down to help her pick up the mess. Quietly, shyly.  Neither of them needed to talk, they just worked quietly together, picking up the boxes and restacking the display. When they finished, she nodded to him in gratitude, making quick eye contact before she averted her gaze. He smiled and touched her hand before walking down the aisle as she returned to work. And so it began.

When she finished work that evening he was there, waiting for her outside the employee door. She knew he would be. He walked with her in the soft silence of the crisp winter night, as if he had known her always.  They sat across from each other at the local teashop, finally exchanging names and not much else. They didn’t have to. They already knew it was right… two familiar souls, reunited by fate. A comfortable silence passed between them. And as each day passed, he was there waiting for her after work, walking her home in loving silence. The months flew by as a great love grew between them.   

Until, on a warm summer afternoon, in the middle of a field of wild flowers and jasmine, in the presence of the Lord, they took their vows of marriage. As they gazed deep into each other’s eyes, they said “I do” as the Minister pronounced them husband and wife. The summer breeze blew gently and the scent of jasmine hung sweetly in the air. She never thought she would be this happy. He never thought he would find his soul mate. They would spend the next twenty years together in blissful harmony, never spending a night apart from each other. Ah fate.

But everything that begins must also end. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under Heaven. And on a quiet spring morning as the scent of jasmine hung sweetly in the air, before the sun peaked over the mountains, the Lord embraced them, sending His Angels to carry them both into His loving arms. For the Kingdom of Heaven is Paradise. They had discovered their Paradise on Earth. And the Lord smiled.