Golden Silence

The world is loud.

My first semester in college, I experienced this loudness more intensely than ever before. It was my first time living somewhere that wasn’t with my parents, and I made the rookie, people-pleasing mistake of getting heavily involved in the first group of friends I met. Those friends taught me a lot about the ways of the world outside the bubble I was raised in, and for a time, those things were novel and interesting to me.

But it wasn’t sustainable. Those friends weren’t the best friends I could have made. They often took advantage of some of my pre-existing insecurities to “lovingly” bully and act reductively towards me. (P.S. “bully” and “love” don’t belong in the same sentence.)

I’d already been through that type of experience in high school, so the red flags rose and alarm bells went off in my head, but I was so used to it and so naïve that I just let it slide. That is, until Christmas break came.

My parents picked me up from school to drive me home. If I recall correctly, I hadn’t been back all semester.

When I walked through the door of my childhood home, something happened that immediately gave me clarity about the experience I had just been through. And it wasn’t what you might think.

See, in that first semester, I lived on the Freshman hall of a dormitory. I had a roommate for the first time since I was a young kid when my brother and I shared a room. I had no parents telling me what to do. I was surrounded by people who were all within a few years of my age, supposedly “grown up” and all on their new college adventure. The halls and common rooms were high-ceilinged and echoey. The air conditioning was loud. I’d hear footsteps outside my door on a regular basis as college kids ran up and down the hall.

And that’s why the thing that happened when I got home for the first time in months was so significant.

I heard silence.

The house was quiet, peaceful. The A/C wasn’t loud. I was in the presence of my loving mom and dad, who had raised me and helped me build a solid foundation of faith.

The silence spoke the loudest of any I’d felt up to that point in my life. It was a silence that was full of the presence of God, like the whisper that Elijah heard on the mountain in 1 Kings 19. It was full of meaning.

When was the last time you sat in silence and actually felt it? I know it’s hard to sit in silence these days. If we do it for more than a couple minutes, it starts feeling weird. We put on music or a podcast or an audiobook, or whip out our phones for the latest screen time hit, or turn on the TV. I know certain types of neurodivergence and mental health conditions can cause people to find silence oppressive, but for me, it’s necessary for the health of my soul.

As hard as it is for me to admit, I usually can’t stand sitting in silence unless I’m focusing on a task, which makes my brain kick up a storm of static. It’s been a while since I just tried to sit quietly and focus on the silence, a place in which the presence of God may be found if I’m willing to be patient.

Our productivity-addicted society insists that we do something constructive and noisy practically every waking moment. Silence generally isn’t considered constructive. Meditation has come back into the mainstream (and even that is often facilitated by music or guided audio), but even that often has a “productivity” label slapped on it.

When I heard that silence upon walking into that house, which had been full of the blessing of the Holy Spirit for as long as I can remember, I felt a relief I hadn’t realized I needed.

I spent the next month remembering my upbringing and being glad to be home with my family and church as I celebrated Christmas and the New Year with them. That month was kind of a blur, but I remember as clear as day the hour that I got back to my college dorm. I walked back to the common room where those other friends were already gathered and said hi.

I got nothing. One of them might’ve said “welcome back” briefly, but there was no “How was your break?” or “We missed you!” None of them got up from staring at their laptops or phones to give me a hug or even a fist bump. It was a different kind of silence. A lonely one.

The clarity struck again. I left the room and didn’t go back to that group. I then did that week what I should’ve done the previous semester: I got involved in the Christian student fellowship group that I had planned to join before even coming to college. I found the love of God amongst a group of people who were pursuing Him together.

It’s wild, the things both noise and silence can communicate. The noise of the world attracted me at first, but it was empty while trying to convince me it was full of great things. The quietness when I got home was comforting and loaded with meaning. And when I returned, the silence from the people who were supposed to be my newest friends was deafening.

God speaks to us most easily and obviously when we’re quiet. The noise of the world likes to block it out. I’ve since learned that if I want to hear anything substantial from the Holy Spirit, I have to quiet myself and actually give Him space to speak. He won’t rush me. He won’t force Himself on me. Often, He’s trying to tell me something and I’m deaf to it because I choose not to tune in to His words.

Silence can truly be golden if it’s the right type. I still have difficulty letting myself be still and silent, unfortunately. However, as the world grows even noisier, I’m determined to practice silence more and more, and gain peace as a result.