On Quiet

Of all the meditative ways to draw closer to God, quiet is one of my favorites. I love quiet. When I drive, I often don’t turn on podcasts or Spotify because I like the hum of the engine and the flow of my thoughts. In the mornings, when I’m up before everyone else, sometimes I catch myself with the pen still on the page or the Bible open in my lap, lost in my own world that the quiet opens before me.

But in my regular life, quiet is often elusive. As I write this, my son is on the other couch rapping while he looks at a favorite music page. I spent my afternoon trying to read while my kids had piano lessons, and then they shrieked in the backseat all the way home. When I came inside the house, my husband had a YouTube video on while bacon sizzled and pasta water boiled.

In fact, while writing these first two paragraphs, I was stopped three times--by my husband, who wanted me to come and read something he’d written; by my son, who wanted to complain that he couldn’t find the music he wanted; and by my son again, who needed a hug and someone to talk. Quiet is hard to find around here, and even when I think it’s clear that I need a minute, everyone thinks they should have a piece of my time.

My grandmother always told me that she used to feel desperate for alone time until she realized that soon enough she’d have too much of it. I remind myself of this when I’m irritated that my husband loves to fill any silence with music (Beatles right now), or when I’m hitting a groove and someone calls, “Mom?”

After all, maybe a moment of quiet, snatched here and there, is really all I need. Because as much as I love a quiet moment, I also can’t wait to read Shel Silverstein and Bible stories with my son, and to curl up in bed and sing with my daughter. Maybe in my life, the quiet and the noise sing harmony, and my life would not be complete without either of them. Maybe this kind of noise is one of the ways God shows himself to me, and lets me draw closer to him.