Things I Love, November 2024 Edition

Ways of Being Quiet

Good morning, friends. I am sitting at my desk with a full pot of tea, listening to Iona, scratching out some notes for the day that lies before me. I come to every Tuesday grateful, almost to tears, to have a full day to sit at this desk, to ponder, to imagine, to write, and to share. Of course, Randy will bring me the baby when he needs to nurse, and little people will be hugged and then shooed out all day long. But this rhythm of my life resets my breathing, slows my hurried pace, and allows me to come back into the joyous chaos of mothering nine children with deeper gratitude and a more spacious grace. It is a way of being quiet. I love it.

Some More Things I Love:

I am halfway through Sarah Clarkson’s new book, Reclaiming Quiet, Cultivating a Life of Holy Attention. It is beautifully, breathtakingly written. Her words are like a slow walk through an autumn wood in the late afternoon, with shadows and brightness dancing together. The book is putting words and imagery to ideas that, now that I look back, I have felt in the core of my being for as long as I can remember, although I didn’t know they could be named or described.

The imagery of this quote, which depicts why we sometimes choose noise and chaos over seeking out quiet, will stay with me forever:

“Quiet, even when chosen, can feel at first like darkness. I sit down to be silent and know I’ve entered a vast space whose borders I cannot see, whose paths I cannot navigate or trace. Sometimes, when I push away the great cacophony of noise and screen and distraction, the first thing I feel is a kind of abandonment. At that moment, the noise I’ve left behind feels like it was my companion and defender, and now I am alone. Anything might walk abroad in the tracklessness of my hush. And the fear of quiet is as old as Adam and as visceral as grief.

I think there’s a good reason for that kind of fear.

It might as well be said up front that when we step beyond the bright, frenzied circles of our distraction into the dark, waiting space of quiet, we end up meeting two people. The first is our own self, stripped, our need and fear in a raw welter upon our bare skin. Sometimes in quiet, the chill nakedness of our discontent and shame, our fear and desire, becomes plain to us in a way that leaves us almost breathless with dismay. There’s a real sense in which the choice to be silent ushers us into the presence of all things noise obscures for us most of the time: the inescapable nature of our frailty, the dreams we have lost, the hovering possibility of grief, our pervasive failure. To be quiet can feel like stepping into the presence of death.

Except for the fact that love has mapped the wilderness and waits at its heart; for the second person we meet in our quiet is God.”

I highly recommend this book. Everything Sarah does is lovely. You can find her here on Substack at

Sarah Clarkson

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Quiet Time:
When I had five children, ages seven and under, I started having a daily quiet time. The first week or so, there was some training involved, but after that initial setting up of rules (you can do anything as long as it’s quiet, no screens, no playing with anyone else, etc.) and enforcing them, to my amazement, it worked. I will never forget the first time I settled the babies and walked down to the living room. No one was running, no one was fighting. No one was making a visible mess in the main parts of the house. The stillness was weighted, and it wrapped around me like a blanket. I sat on the couch and sobbed. I had been so desperate for quiet. For that stillness that stretched out beyond the snatched moment to something that was planned, almost sure to happen each day. I couldn’t believe that it was possible. Through every season, for years, we faithfully observed quiet time each day. And then, during some pregnancy, and with the introduction of some wild little boys into the family, we somehow lost our rhythm. After reading Sarah’s book, I am working on reestablishing this rhythm in our family. (Two days of blessed quiet and counting!) I want my children to cultivate a rich inner life. To know how to be content alone for a space of time. And that stillness… It is palpable. It is such a gift.

Writing in Journals:
While we are talking about quiet, I have to mention journaling, because it is a way you can catch the quiet. It is taking the elusive, interior life and sitting it down for a long conversation. Journaling is befriending your true self.

Written Prayers:
A couple of years ago, I began a practice of writing down prayers for my husband and leaving them for him each evening. I have started notebooks for some of my children, with the hopes of one day giving each of them a full notebook of prayers I have prayed over their lives. I feel that this is a quiet, concentrated way to love my family and to love God. I also find that physically writing down my prayers is the best way for me to pray. It is the only way I can focus my mind for any space of time. This is the way I quiet my mind most evenings before bed. I find it helps me to leave my cares with Christ and go to sleep in peace.

Drawing:
Drawing is like seeing x 1000. It is another way of slowing down the mind, moving the eye across all the beautiful details of moving life and entering into the quiet around it. I feel that a drawing can be a wordless prayer. My journals are scattered with words, written prayers, quotes, scribbles, and drawings. This drawing reminds me of that quiet that I knew effortlessly as a child. I am offering it up to God as a prayer for a way back.

From my journal, self-portrait age 9, reading in my sister’s room.

Sending love today, and the prayer that you may find a way back to a spacious quiet in your own life today.

Mackenzie

From the Family Archive:

Randy’s song is a prayer to pray if you feel like you are drowning in all the voices and you want to reach up for God’s outstretched hand. Peace, be still.

From the Podcast:

This episode is for anyone who wakes up in the middle of the night with questions that don’t have answers. If you are struggling with fears of what might happen, or wrestling with thoughts of if only things had happened differently, pull up a chair and let’s talk about finding God in this moment, the discipline of trust, and how we can truly cast our cares upon Christ. (Recorded Nov. 6, 2023)

My Book:

Now available wherever you buy books online.

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