I don’t love silence.

Silence is uncomfortable. It takes away all my other distractions and leaves me alone with my thoughts. It suppresses me with an overwhelming sense of nothingness.

So in order to avoid the dreaded silence, I fill my life with noise.

Podcasts. Music. Phone calls. Voice recordings. Netflix. Even the pursuit of different goals can quickly become another thing that just adds to the loudness.

For those of us who fill every quiet space with noise, the problem hides beneath the surface of cluttered lives until one day, the loudness is too much to ignore.

For me, that point came early last week. I’d had a full, tiring day at school and I was at my breaking point. My life had been filled with so much noise, and I realized my need for that silence. But because I didn’t come to it in a healthy way, I snapped at Seth. And he didn’t even do anything wrong.

I realized that in the past few weeks, I haven’t spent nearly as much alone time with God as I needed. I filled even the quiet, sacred spaces in my life with noise.

So much noise.

So I sat on the floor of my bedroom, one completely silent place I could find, and I enjoyed some quiet time with God. Here are some words from my prayer journal last week: “I’m missing the silence, and I’m learning that quiet matters. Help me to be intentionally quiet in Your presence, God.”

Quiet matters.

In the silence, we can find our sustenance in God. We can breathe in and out His praises when we aren’t surrounded by the noises of this world. We can ask God to be our peace, our joy, our gentleness, our everything when we aren’t constantly turning back to that noise.

In the silence, we can process our thoughts. And even though that can be uncomfortable, it is so necessary.

In the silence, we can be better prepared to hear the voice of God. How will we hear Him if our lives are too loud? How can we hear if we never pause to listen?

Silence is beautiful, and even though I still don’t love it, I’m learning that life is painful without it.

Reclaim the silence in your life. Take a quiet walk, just you and God. Sit in the corner of your room and pray. Drive to work without background music. Take the time to just listen.

This isn’t to say we have to cut all the background noise out of our lives. Loudness has a place too. 

But the more we are intentional with silence—at least in my experience—the more we might be able to count on God as our peace and sustenance. 

Thanks for walking through this with me, friend. 

And never forget… you are onederfully created.

Love,
Becca