It’s been nearly three years since I left my very busy and very stressful corporate position, just over one-and-a-half years since I moved from the West coast to the East to live with my sister and her family, and eight months since I turned in my book manuscript to the publisher. Each of these transitions (and many more besides) have offered me increasingly more time and more quiet, along with more resistance to the same.
I took this picture one week ago today—enjoying both time and quiet. (The beach definitely helps!)
You’d think it would be just the opposite: that as demands and deadlines and expectations have lessened, I’d be completely on board; thrilled, even. And in so many ways, I am. Still, the spaciousness can feel unfamiliar and slightly angsty. So, I fill it. I scroll through Facebook, Instagram, and Substack. I rearrange things—books, furniture, décor. I find something to eat. I struggle to sit still. My heart rate is higher than I’d prefer. My brain races through a million-and-one ideas and inner voices chatter away. And though I’m not crazy about any of this, it all feels familiar, normal even.
I am, of course, conditioned to believe this is normal. Hustle-and-grind culture. Capitalism. Patriarchy. Keep busy. Do more. Buy more. Strive. And be proud of every bit of this! As much as I would like to believe that I am immune to such things, their influence pervades. Add in a not-so-healthy dose of the Protestant work ethic and it’s hardly surprising that I struggle with the spaciousness of time and quiet. I always have.
Apparently the Universe knows all about this highly-honed tendency of mine and so, placed the following quote in my path a few days back:1
In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen,
we can hear the whisper of the heart
giving strength to weakness,
courage to fear, hope to despair. ~ Howard Thurman
When I read it the first time, I felt like I was back in Driver’s Ed—the instructor suddenly slamming on the brake, lurching to a stop that I didn’t intend or initiate. Shocked into attention. Getting my bearings. Right: stillness, quiet, listen . . . When I read it again, my breathing started to slow and I reveled in the phrase, “the whisper of the heart.” In subsequent returns to these words in past days, I’ve been able to hear my own questions make their way to the surface: Is my resistance to both time and quiet actually resistance to something else? Where do I know (but struggle to admit) places of weakness or fear or despair? What am I attempting to sidestep by staying busy? What will I hear if I actually slow down and listen to the whisper of my heart? Why am I avoiding that?
*heavy sigh*
*****
I’ve read a ton of novels in which the protagonists spent their childhoods lost in books, wandering in fields, staring up at the clouds, living in their imagination. I am admittedly envious. Maybe I had my own version of the same, but the edges are blurry . . . and busy. I seem to remember that there was always something to do, something required, no time to waste, “idleness is the devil’s workshop,” all that. I’ve seen the evidence of pictures I drew, images I made out of scraps of fabric glued on paper, slides (yes, “slides”) of me dressed up and performing plays. And of course, I spent plenty of time on the floor of my bedroom with Barbies. (I could be wrong, but I’m relatively certain I spent more time constructing their world—organizing it, really—than dreaming up how they moved through it.) My tangible recall is connected to practicing the piano, doing homework, memorizing poems and Bible verses, completing required chores, caring for my little sister, and subconsciously making sure circumstances, situations, and people remained calm and copasetic. And though it nearly breaks my heart, I’m not sure I did much better with my own daughters— allowing, even encouraging time and quiet, inviting them into the joy of expansive space with nothing required, nothing expected, nothing to do but “be.”
There was a particular season in which I diligently and very consciously stayed busy so that I could avoid all that was dysfunctional, painful, and sad in my then-marriage. My house had never been so clean: dishes washed, countertops glistening, rugs vacuumed, knickknacks dusted, bathrooms sparkling, every toy in its place at the end of the day. My time was rigidly scheduled and planned—a self-inflicted discipline and demand. And I went to bed each night as quickly as possible, feigning sleep, once the girls were tucked in, stories read, kisses given. I desperately needed everything in lock step, contained, clamped down, controlled-controlled-controlled. Otherwise, the smallest windows of time or quiet might open up. They would usher in too many thoughts, too many emotions, or worse, an actual conversation that I knew wasn’t going to go anywhere good. Had I given myself permission to stop, to rest, to listen, to “be,” my heart would not have whispered, it would have screamed.
*****
My life, both within and without, is very different now thanks to therapy, spiritual direction, a divorce, the constancy of dear friends, the respite of writing, and many, many years passed. My proclivity for staying busy has hardly disappeared; it remains my default, to be sure. But now, more often than not, I can see it, spot it, and occasionally even stop long enough to look a little closer and dig a little deeper.
Not always, but sometimes, even as I mindlessly scroll or rearrange or make myself a snack, I can reflect: What would happen if you put down your phone? What might you do (or not do) if you just let that pillow stay exactly where it is? What are you actually hungry for that has nothing to do with food? Not always, but sometimes, I can slow down, sit still, inhale and exhale, and listen to the answers my own questions summon. Not always, but sometimes, I can allow the emotions that accompany and swirl. Not always, but sometimes, I can extend myself grace for the places in which I feel weak and unsure, afraid and ambivalent, despairing and discouraged. And not sometimes, but always, I am grateful when I can let all of this just be, when I can just be, instead of literally and figuratively attempting to sweep it under the rug.
In her must-read book, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, author Tricia Hersey says this:
There has been no space for any of us to dream of anything outside of what we have been born into. To hear the simple and bold proclamation, “You are doing too much. You can rest. You can just be. You can be,” is revolutionary.
I’m all for that revolution.
Perhaps one day I will revel in a spaciousness so vast that I wander and imagine and dream without a thought of picking up my phone or straightening a piece of art on the wall, or seeing if there are still Doritos left in the pantry. Perhaps one day I will allow a silence so long and deep that even the voices in my head are hushed in awe, and it never occurs to me to feel restless or anxious or god forbid, unproductive. Perhaps one day I will recognize the quiet as a dear friend who sits by my side as we watch the sun dip below the horizon, not a single thought of doing more, buying more, being more . . . instead, clear that this is more than enough, that I am. Perhaps one day “the whisper of the heart” will overtake and heal every pattern of staying busy, any belief that equates my value with effort, any voice that hints at anything other than “just be.”
For now, I suffer no illusions about the time-worn and culture-reinforced grooves that lure me to distraction, that attempt to protect me from feeling what I feel. But here’s the thing: every one of my oh-so-diligent efforts to fill up spacious time and tamp down ample quiet actually serve me. They are generous reminders and wide-open invitations to pay attention, settle down, return home to my very self, and listen to my ever-whispering heart.
In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen,
we can hear the whisper of the heart
giving strength to weakness,
courage to fear, hope to despair.
May it be so.
A P.S. of sorts: In conversation with one of my spiritual-direction clients a few days back, I invited them to consider a place in which they are struggling as an opportunity to form a sacred-practice.
When connected to the church and religion for any amount of time, especially if we grew up in such, we adopt particular practices: prayer, confession, communion, etc. But when we disconnect and leave these behind, or are in the process of such, we often feel a gap, a loss, even a hunger for meaningful rituals and routines that were once part of our everyday life.
So, as it relates to time and quiet—particularly, if like me, you fill them up with busy-ness and distraction so as to ignore the thoughts and feelings that surface—consider letting the awareness of your own patterns and behaviors (scrolling on your phone, rearranging furniture, searching for Doritos) be a grace-filled invitation to the sacred within, an intentional returning to self, a deep breath and a “thank you.”
These very things that perplex and/or frustrate you (often about your self and yes, even others) are like a bell that rings, ushering you into a sacred practice that strengthens and sustains. These very things ARE “the whisper of your heart,” no matter how faint, calling you home, again and again.