Quiet

It’s quiet.  I can hear myself.  Today the quiet doesn’t scare me anymore.  I remember the days it did - the four long years that the quiet was so loud it rattled my insides.  I longed for laughter, music, voices, boy noise to fill my home.  And it is finally here.  But right now my favorite men are at work and school, and it is quiet again – the peaceful reassuring quiet that comes just before the school bus comes around.  This quiet says, “I’m here, but not for long.  How do you want to use this time before it’s not quiet anymore?”

I have whiplash from the complete jolt that happens when you go from no kids to 3 kids.  And not just 3 kids – 3 big kids.  We aren’t changing diapers or rocking them to sleep.  (I grieve we didn’t get to do that with them, though).  We are packing lunches, talking to teachers about classroom struggles, trying out for sports, learning English, explaining that what just happened to them was a “shart,” and other fun boy things.  We went from silence to full-on adolescent boy clamor. And it’s beautifully chaotic.

So in this moment of quiet I asked myself what I needed. What am I not getting to do that I used to do when there was so much quiet?  The answer - write.  I love writing. And before it was about all my sorrows that came with the quiet.  And ironically now it’s more about how to find some solitude – a sense that I haven’t gotten lost in my sons’ laundry baskets.  My intention is never to complain or have a “poor pitiful me” attitude. My intention is always to connect.  Because life just gets hard sometimes, and I believe someone out there feels what I am feeling – or has, or will.   And a big thing I’ve learned for myself is that I just need to know I’m not alone.  When I let even a little vulnerability out, even if it’s Debbie Downer messy, I might want to run straight to my shame shack for letting you see it, but in the end I always feel better being out of hiding.  I connect.  My mess doesn’t feel so consuming when I realize I’m part of a bigger group of souls who have their hands raised waiting on someone to call on them and say, “Yes, you with the quivering tired hand, what do you need?”

So I’m writing again when I can.  I have resigned myself to the fact that it won’t be as much as before, but I can let it be.  And I’m excited that part of the writing will be a book. It may flop.  It may not ever make it on a shelf, but I’m writing it, because the precious few moments of quiet invite me to feed a part of me that is ready to tell a story and come alive.  

Some thoughts for you…

~Maybe you have lots of “quiet” in your life right now?  How do you notice you spend this time?  Is it too quiet?  What is the “noise” you are looking for?  How could you begin to invite or notice it?

~Or maybe it’s really noisy in your life right now.  How can you find some pockets of quiet? And what would you do in those invaluable moments?

~It’s easy to fill up quiet with more noise that isn’t fulfilling.  Or on the flip side, filling up with more quiet can be draining and lonely.  Both quiet and noise have their pros and cons. What are those pros and cons for YOU? They are different for everyone.