You Don’t Need to Speak to Voice a Message That Really Matters

When you’re an introvert, the most powerful way for you to speak sometimes is to put away your voice and deliver your message silently.

Wendi Wheeler had been up all night Saturday and into the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Contemplating suicide.

In the midst of it all, she had thrown up a desperation prayer, asking for a sign, any kind of sign, that she should go on living.

Little did she know that her prayer would be answered literally.

The Right Words

Later that same Sunday morning, as she was driving to do an errand on what she thought would be her last day on Earth, Wheeler spotted a total stranger named Jay Dagny.

He was impossible to miss, even though he didn’t speak a word.

Dagny was sitting quietly alone on the corner of Main Avenue and Eighth Street right here in my city of Moorhead, Minnesota—the corner Wheeler was approaching.

Dagny was holding a simple handmade sign, one he figured would do all the talking necessary.

It said, simply:

YOU ARE LOVED

“I [had] actually asked for a sign and there he was, holding a sign,” Wheeler told our local newspaper, The Forum of Fargo, North Dakota, in an article about her encounter with Dagny.

And in her post to a local Facebook group shortly thereafter, Wheeler had this to add:

“I stopped my car and got out. ‘I just want to thank you for being here,’ I said [to Dagny]. ‘Last night I was thinking of ending my life, and here you are.’ He hugged me and we both cried. Thank you for good people. We need more blessings and kindness in this world.”

Letting the Sign Speak

What would motivate a guy to spend an hour or two a day, a couple of days a week, sitting silently on a street corner across from our town’s historic Dairy Queen, perched in front of a pizza place and holding a sign that says “YOU ARE LOVED” on it (and “IT’LL BE OKAY” on the back, 
by the way)?

Well, Dagny had a message he wanted to spread.

As he told local radio station WDAY:

“I’m very strong in my religious faith, and a couple of weeks ago I saw a man evangelizing on a street corner, screaming ‘repent’ and all this, and it really just left a bad taste in my mouth.”

It wasn’t, and isn’t, what people need to hear, Dagny decided:

“I knew that what people needed—what I’ve experienced the most—is that love and joy. And I know that people need that peace, especially right now. People need to be reassured that someone loves them out there, and I just wanted to get the message across.”

Sometimes, as Dagny so powerfully proved, the best way to do that is to dispense with all the screaming and shouting and instead speak softly, even silently.

And carry a big sign.