Pockets of Quiet

Finding some quiet time is always worth it.

Last week, my pastor’s wife, subbed at the school where I am working. She just retired from there and she was thrilled to be back. She also happens to sit right beside me in the choir and we laugh together a lot, mostly at ourselves and our inability to get the notes just right. I’m thankful that God put her in my path and made us friends.

At the end of the day, she came up to my desk and asked me how things were going with my new job. I told her that everyone was so nice and that I was really enjoying it, but that I also really missed having quiet.

It’s never quiet in the office of an elementary school. The phone rings. Children regularly parade through to the clinic. Parents come to check their children out and then to check them back in. And the bus radio, the bus radio is AM radio on steroids. It’s static and bus drivers from like ten schools talking over each other and ours sits right at my desk in my ear. Remember the seventies? It’s like that.

She smiled and told me that she completely understood, that she too, needed quiet, when she was working and that a lot of people didn’t understand that, but that it’s something that we all need.

She leaned in and told me that I had to find pockets of quiet. She told me that she would sometimes go home and just sit on her porch for a few minutes after work, but that she had to search for and create those pockets.

I thought about our conversation over the next few days. It made so much sense. I had always been one who liked a big chunk of quiet, like an hour or so, but what if I just tried to snatch 10 or 15 minutes here and there?

What if I turned off the radio when I was driving? What if instead of returning phone calls when I got home before my children, I just enjoyed the quiet time? I think she’s right about the pockets and I’m choosing to think of them as peace pockets.

I am choosing to seek out several times a day, whenever I can, to find a few minutes of peace, a few minutes where I can have some quiet and take a deep breath, to say a little prayer, to get back to center, and to ask God for guidance on my journey.

Sometimes, we have to be willing to fight for the quiet and insist on it, but I feel like it’s totally worth it. We can’t hear God, if we aren’t quietly listening.

A dear friend reminded me. Perhaps you needed reminding too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂