Quieting the noise.

Or, remembering what's true.

I’m in the eighth grade, and I work for an entire semester on a poetry project. My masterpiece is titled “The Waterfall”, and I am quietly more proud of it than I let on. I type it out on our primitive Apple computer before printing it and hot gluing it to a foam poster board, backed by blue construction paper and affixed with those plastic flowers my mom bought at Michael’s. I am convinced it is gorgeous.

I bring it to school and it’s on display at Open House, there for my family and friends to see. 

It is the first time someone calls me a writer.

It is the first time I start to think that maybe I am.

//

I’m in high school and full of fairly normal insecurity and hormones and teen angst and life only makes sense to me on the page. I write and pray and work out everything between my mind and my heart with a notebook and pen. I write because I can’t un-jumble all that’s jumbled until I do.

I begin to carry a notebook with me then. Sometimes the words have to get out faster than I can find a pen. It’s the only way I know how to cope with all the things I cannot say.

//

I’m in college and I’ve chosen journalism as my major. I want to write stories, craft words, make something beautiful on the page–without blue construction paper or plastic flowers.

Writing scares me. Writing makes me come alive. I wonder if I can do it or not. I want to do it. I don’t know if I’m good enough. I rarely feel like I’m good enough.

I change my major to teaching, because I love that too, and to be honest, it’s not nearly as terrifying. I’m nothing if not safe.

//

My mom gets sick. I stop writing and go completely silent. Nothing makes sense, even on the page. 

We lose her, and my notebooks sit empty for a long time.

//

I’m a new wife, about to be a new mom, and far away from my family. Everything feels new and hard, and I desperately need a way to make sense of things.

I start writing again. In my head, I’ve been writing all along. The words pour out of me, this time through my fingers onto a keyboard, instead of into a notebook.

It feels a little like coming back home.

I write about our new life, but mostly about all I’m learning during these years. I write about what the Lord is teaching me, about grief and organizing and motherhood and marriage and what I’m making for dinner that week. I write about everything and nothing and people seem to relate.

I write to process it all myself, and I share it on a blog to tell others they are not alone.

I share it to see if I’m not alone.

//

I’m 20, and 30, and life is survival mode.

I birth babies—I almost lose one of them, and then they both almost lose me.

I somehow miraculously snag the book deal I’ve dreamed of my whole life—and then it falls to pieces and so do I.

That blog changes because we are broke and I am panicked. I have to do SOMETHING to help support my family, so I start creating products instead of crafting words and I end up leaving writing on the back burner. Not because I want to, but because I have to.

I am nothing if not safe.

There are too many people counting on me now. They need the stability and so do I. I do not believe that everyone can do everything, so I do the responsible thing and only write what’s necessary for the business to keep growing.

I’m a writer who isn’t writing and I don’t realize it yet but it’s slowly killing me.

//

I’m 38 years old and I find myself in a bit of a situation.

I listen to a podcast on running a business and hear the host say that burnout is normal and should last about 3 weeks or so. If you’ve felt burned out for 3 MONTHS, she says, it’s likely time that you need to step away and take a break. Do something that refreshes you. Pour back into yourself again.

I am at a stoplight when she drops that bomb, and I start laughing until I cry. If I’m honest, I’ve been burned out for no less than three years.

My brain is noisy all the time. Between instagram doom-scrolling and customer service emails and content creation and product launches, not to mention homeschooling and marriage and laundry and house cleaning, there is not a single quiet space left inside of my head.

I miss writing. 

I miss the quiet of sitting with my thoughts, praying through my struggles as my fingers fill the page, sorting out life and asking the Lord to remind me of what’s true.

But I don’t know how to start writing again without sacrificing something else. And I don’t know what else can go.

I pull over because I can’t see through the tears.

//

I lay it all before the Lord again, the same way I have for the last three years, and I ask Him what to do.

Do I sell the business? No. We depend on it and in my heart of hearts, I still love it. I love the women I get to serve. It is a gift the Lord has given to me, and I do not take that lightly. Letting it go does not feel right.

Do I stop homeschooling? Not a chance. In this season, we are convinced that this is the best option for our kids, and what the Lord is calling us to. Yes, it requires time I could spend working, but nothing is more important than serving the Lord through raising my children.

So what goes?

The answer comes quickly, like I already knew it.

Maybe I did.

I take everything off my phone. Social media. Work email. All the things that consume my attention even when I am not looking at them. I make a desperate, intentional decision to quiet the things that I can, in a last-ditch attempt to quell the burnout and refill my soul.

It takes weeks, but it works.

//

My brain remembers who it is again after no less than two months without the noise on my phone, the distractions constantly in front of my face.

The quiet has renewed me, and I am different because of it.

My anxiety is almost completely gone. The burnout along with it.

I find myself more patient, less rushed. Not because I have less to do, but because I have limited what’s allowed to demand my attention.

I can focus on one thing for much longer—reading, writing, brainstorming. My attention span is back to normal. (Had I even realized how bad it had gotten?)

I have new ideas. Creative ideas for the business, for my home, for my family. Ideas that actually excite me, instead of seeming like one more thing I just don’t have time for.

Because now, I do have time.

I start to see life in stories, like I used to. Stories that point back to the faithfulness of Christ - something I struggled to recognize when burnout ran rampant and distraction was my MO. 

I feel more like myself—the woman God created me to be—than I have in years.

I start writing again.

//

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength.” - Isaiah 30:15

The second part of that verse goes like this: “...but you would have NONE of it.”

I’m almost 40 and I’m done having none of it.

When I intentionally quiet the noise of this world, when I remember how God has proven his faithfulness over and over in my life, I cannot help but trust Him for whatever else is coming.

And I cannot help but write about it.