Quiet

If you look the word quiet up in a thesaurus it uses peaceful as a synonym. Have you ever thought about the vast differences quiet moments hold? They can be filled with fear, sadness, hope, anger, frustration, joy; but the one thing they usually aren’t (at least in my world) are peaceful.

The year was 1998 and they had just told us during an ultrasound that I had lost our second child. We drove home and I immediately walked into the house and took my sleeping first born out of my mother-in-law’s arms. I carried him to his nursery, sat in the quiet cocoon of his room and rocked him back and forth while crying the soul crushing tears knowing I would never hold that child the way I held this one.

Another ultrasound room in 2001 where we checked once again for a heartbeat that couldn’t be heard in the scan done two weeks prior. There was an uncomfortable and awkward quietness that surrounded us before the sound of our daughter’s strong, solid, beautiful heart surprised us all and filled the room.

January 17, 2013, the day my father took his final breath while his wife and two daughters stood beside him as we had for the last 20 years. There was an absence of sound that inhabited that moment and we all tried to hang onto it as long as possible, not wanting the intrusion of cars, phones or voices to disturb the quietness that enveloped us like a blanket.

August 14, 2020, walking back into a quiet house after dropping our last child off of at college. It was just the two of us now and there was a fear that surrounded the thoughts of how our marriage would change without the focus being on our kids instead of each other.

Quiet moments hold hope, fear, confusion, promises yet fulfilled, happiness, sadness; and somehow those feeling are all felt at the exact same time. So how then is the definition of quiet the “absence of noise or bustle; silence; calm”? Quiet moments are anything but calm and they’re usually not peaceful, my quiet moments seem to be all at once brutal and beautiful.

Ecclesiastes tells us there is time for everything, even to be quiet. I’ve learned so many lessons from God in those quiet moments.