I admit I love the sound of the silence when you close the door and no one else is home. (Thank you for this notion from Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth ~ one of my favorite books of all time.)

Today this feels especially so. My young adults have returned from their schooling endeavors and have descended upon the homefront. Having been away last week, I had not gotten the full brunt of the morning whirlwind. Three girls and a husband, each off to a different place, with a Mom-made lunch in hand. I wish I had photos to share (they would not have stood for me taking them) but suffice to say, the attire of each spoke exactly the personality of each and the destination of each. NO words required.

And now there is silence. Even the dogs respect it. But my morning has been turned on its head. No longer the quiet expanse to sip coffee, ponder and write. How spoiled I was. Now I must wait until 9:00 (!) for the silence. I wonder if my “spiritual” brain will extend its timing until then. Until now. God seems to say, “Do you think I only speak blog at 6am?”

Funny. The clutter of doing this morning – the lunch orders, PBJ, ham and cheese, pretzels, popcorn, strawberries, bananas – at first it disarmed me. That, on top of retrieving the dogs and the newspaper from the pouring rain, making the coffee and the rest, had me spinning in circles. No progress at all, it seemed, until I gave up. Figured that a change was in the air and gave in to ‘work’ rather than quiet time in the early morning hours.

And all at once it wasn’t work. It wasn’t even whirl. God reminded me who I was. That the doing itself could be prayer and praise. Reluctantly, I gave in. And…put in a load of laundry.

Then, around 9, came silence. Beautiful. Golden. Lung-filling, brain-activating silence. And I knelt in the place I do when humility before God is especially in order. And God thought into my inner ear,

“Time spent well is not time lost.”

And I pictured the sticks and debris that held back the waters begin to release. Slowly, evenly, one by one, they entered into the downstream flow. Buoyant and bobbing happily. Orderly.

How often I want to impose the order. That it should be ‘just so’ before I release it. God reminds me that He has a perfect order in mind which things will assume naturally when we free them to float. After all, the truth is meant to set us free. As Madeleine L’Engle says, “Free to run across the lake when we are called.”

Do I have the faith for that? No way. But if that was what was between me and my Lord, if He called “Wendy, run across the lake to me,” surely I would because He would bolster my faith for a run such as that.

What if that was everyday? If everyday I listened in the silence or the noise for my name to be called and at that moment, whatever waters stood between me and the will of God were stilled so I could walk across them.

Surely I would run.