October 2019 - Gina Brenna Butz

Struggling with Silence

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 24, 2019
Post category:Uncategorized

I still remember the door shutting behind our two kids as they walked out the door for the first day of their senior and sophomore years of high school. With the new-found freedom of being able to drive themselves, it was the first time I didn’t have to accompany them.

The sudden silence overwhelmed me.

Rather than feeling my own freedom, I felt empty. Tempted to fill the space with activity, instead, I felt compelled to sit and acknowledge it for a moment. I turned it over, questioning where it came from and why. What did it say about my soul?

It wasn’t a comfortable moment.

It was another tug at my soul from God, a whisper from a place of quietness I have always been loath to enter. Productivity, input, engagement-this is where I feel at home.

God Calling Me to Silence

Since then, through various means, including books like You Are What You Love and Liturgy of the Ordinary, God keeps calling me to order my life so that the lonely places are not something to avoid, but something to practice. God keeps calling me to order my life so that the lonely places are not something to avoid, but something to practice. Share on X

I have the best intentions. I believe what people say about the importance of silence, making space for my soul to speak, and space for the Spirit to respond.

So I began carving out that space: ten minutes of silence to start my time with God in the morning. Then fifteen. Even sometimes twenty. Turning off the radio during a drive. Choosing not to pull up a podcast on a long walk with my dog.

I love what I find there, I do.

Creating space for silence lets my soul breathe. All the anxiety that hides in corners of my soul, weighing it down, comes crawling out into the open. There’s relief in offering it to Someone far more capable than I. Thoughts crystallize. I become conscious of what holds my heart. My soul gets quiet enough to listen to God.

My Struggle with Silence

But just as quickly, I let the noise creep back in. It’s easier. I fill a boring moment with a new TV show episode, and suddenly I’m hooked. Someone mentions a new podcast and I pick it up. It’s more fun to cook with something occupying my mind. Soon enough, distractions take over once again.

It’s tempting to be discouraged, to give up.

Perhaps I am simply too hard-wired for activity, I think.

It helps to remember that there is a war for my soul, and the enemy loves using noise and distraction in the fight. This isn’t merely a matter of discipline, but of the kingdom, for which I am ill-equipped to fight on my own. I need God’s help.

So I keep listening for His whispers, calling me back. I know He holds no contempt for me when I finally turn down the sounds of my life and get quiet again. He is patient. He is waiting.

Making Peace with Silence

Places of solitude and silence can overwhelm. But maybe they’re supposed to. In those places, we touch our humanity. We feel how small and helpless we really are to control our space. But we also touch His divinity. We’re invited into His presence.

Sometimes, the silence feels like nothing. My thoughts are scrambled, and it hardly feels worth it. But I believe it is. I trust that something is settling in me-a deeper capacity to be conscious of His presence in a way that seeps into every moment of my life. Hopefully, it’s creating a solid place in me where my false self gets stripped away and I am just His. I have faith that it is.

So I will keep struggling to make peace with silence. As uncomfortable as it may be, as much as I don’t enjoy the flood of thoughts that come knocking when I get quiet, I know there is life there.

And I know that God is on our side in this. He longs to meet us in what feels like empty space, so He can fill us with Himself.

To Truly Be Still

Learning to Walk (at an Unhurried Pace)

His Perfect Timing

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 10, 2019
Post category:transition

God's Perfect Timing — photo by Ales Krivec

When I learned I was pregnant with our son, it did not feel like the most opportune time to have a child.

We were at the first weekend of our training to live cross-culturally. That fall, we were going to move overseas and lead a team of missionaries. I had language learning and cultural adjustment and leadership to do. A baby did not fit into the plan.

But the thought occurred to me one day, “What if this kid needs to come into the world at this time instead of when I had planned? And because of that, someday, he’s going to be in just the right place at just the right time to do something God wants him to do?”

Fast forward 19 years, and I look at my son, who in high school ran for president of his student government with the kid who ended up being just 3 months older than him, the one he grew up with. I think of the people our son knows, whom he has impacted, and I know this: God’s timing is perfect.

This concern about timing doesn’t just crop up in my circumstances. It permeates deeper, to the core of my walk with Him.

Recently, I spoke with a group of women I gather with regularly for some good old deep-end-of-the-ocean soul-baring. When we share, it’s inevitable one of us sighs with the realization, “I thought I’d learned this already.”

You know what I’m talking about. It’s that realization, “hey, this lesson seems familiar.” I thought I was past this. But no, here we are again. Or maybe worse: how am I just now figuring this out?

It’s tempting to get down on ourselves, to wonder why it’s taken us so long to learn something, or to realize what we thought we’d learned didn’t sink in deep enough. But I am learning this: we’re right on time.

“You’re right on time.”

It’s a phrase a friend of mine uses to encourage me when I wonder why I’m just now getting this or learning some lesson all over again.

This phrase invites grace. It invites us to trust in God’s patience, His wisdom, His ways, rather than our own. If God had wanted me here sooner, He would have brought me here sooner.

He says it to remind me that God knows the path of growth he has for me, and his timing is impeccable.

This is when God chose to bring me to this lesson. Or back to this lesson. Again. He doesn’t condemn. He doesn’t wonder why we didn’t get it sooner. There is a time for everything.

God’s timing is not ours.

Because who knows that you haven’t come to this moment for such a time as this? Who knows that you didn’t learn this lesson now for a specific reason?

Who says there’s a timeline we have to follow? If we really believe God numbers our days and knows the plans he has for us, we have to trust that we are where we are because it’s the timing he has for us.

Whether it’s our circumstances or our growth, God knows what He’s doing with us. From our minutes to our years, He is at work.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

This Is Assigned

On Waiting Well

Called to Do Today (And Just Today)