why silence

I'm going to try an experiment with someone who, I think, is ready to hear from GOD. She is a yuong adult, single, working woman, living uot of state. She is struggling with her dad's terminal illness and her need for forgiveness to heal their relationship. Not that their relationship is tragically broken, because they are a family and they do love each other. But, there is pain in the unfinished business of wounded history. Forgiveness is the key to unlock the Kingdom of GOD, according to Jesus. Forgiveness opens the door preventing us from entering in full relationship with GOD and the other. To be released from guilt, shame, punishment, and the need to be judge and punisher is a huge gift that people struggle to accept and receive. How overburdened people are with these painful demons. But forgiveness must be practiced, tested, experienced, lived, and worked on. Forgivenenss is like learning to make and fly a kite. Yuo gotta have the right materials, wind conditions, and a willingness to let something go by a very thin string into the sky.
So, I suggested that she undertake a spiritual discipline as part of the healing process. She is going to counseling, but I think a holistic approach to health is important and often neglected by the medical community. I don't blame them. There is little science or empirical evidence to support the concept of the spirit or the soul. But if you breathe, you are spiritual. And not just a cardio-pulminary, vascular system. We are more than flesh and blood.
So, I have asked her to join me (I won't ask someone to do something I won't do myself, unless it is impossible for me to do it), in six days of ten-minute fasting moments. ten minutes of silence for six days, in a quiet place, outdoors, with a single white paper that has a question written on it: "Why?"
On the 7th day, we are supposed to write the answer to the question. ONe hour of silence in a week. That's it. And then we respond. We will share on the 7th day.
I don't know what will happen. Will GOD surprise us both? Will we be disappointed? Will the reward simply be the silence? or the question? or the answer? Will any healing come from such an exercise?
She and I both realize a need for silence and the lack of it. She is willing to try this, can't hurt we guess. And, at the very least, it keeps us talking about healing as a spiritual process as well as a mental/physical one.
I've never tried such an experiment with anyone who has sought spiritual counsel from me before.
Listening for GOD in the silence and in the question, what will I hear or see? Who will I become? I feel some risk in the undertaking, but I know that I am doing this with and for someone else, too. I suggested that we do this because I am walking with her, accompanying her on her spiritual journey. And she is accompanying me, too.
What do you experience in silence? In a question? Can GOD speak a Word to us through a spiritual practice such as this? May Jesus join us as we seek to listen.