I Didn’t Realize How Much I Needed the Quiet

Life had been full. Not necessarily bad. Not falling apart. Just full.

Work. Leadership. School. Writing. Creating. Family. Responsibilities. Dreams. Decisions. And somewhere underneath all of that, this persistent awareness that another version of my life is beginning to emerge.

I am grateful for all of it. But here's something I've been thinking about since returning from the Pacific Northwest: Even the life you prayed for requires energy to live it. We talk a lot about burnout when things are going wrong. We don't talk nearly enough about depletion when things are actually going right.

You can love your work and need rest. You can be excited about your future and need stillness. You can be deeply grateful and still need to put the whole damn thing down for a minute. I didn't fully understand how much noise I had been carrying until I walked into the Hoh Rainforest. It wasn't silent. Water moved. Leaves rustled. Branches shifted. Birds called from places I couldn't see. The forest was alive with sound. But beneath that sound was a kind of stillness I hadn't experienced in a while. And slowly, something inside me became still too. No agenda. No decisions. No next steps. Just trees that had been standing there long before I arrived and would remain long after I left. Suddenly, all the things I had labeled urgent didn't feel quite so urgent.

That's when I realized: Sometimes we don't need another answer. We need enough quiet to hear the answer that's already inside us. I didn't find clarity because I thought harder.I found it because, for a little while, I stopped trying to figure everything out.

Dashboard Reflection:

Where has your life become so full that you can no longer hear yourself?

You may not need to solve it tonight.

Maybe you simply need some quiet.