There was a year a while back where I don't think I was ever properly alone with my own thoughts.

Podcast on the drive. Music in the house. YouTube on in the background while I ate. Phone in my hand the moment anything paused. If I woke up in the night I was reaching for it before I was fully awake.

At the time I would have told you I was fine.

This week's theme: Stillness.

Today, the honest one. What I was actually avoiding, and how long it took me to notice.

WHAT I WAS AVOIDING

I was going through a hard season.

Nothing catastrophic. No single event I could point to. Just a slow, background sense that things were not right. In my head. In my faith. In one or two of my relationships. In the direction of my life.

I did not want to sit with any of it.

So I didn't. I filled every silence. I loaded up input. I stayed constantly stimulated. And I told myself it was fine because I was still praying, still going to church, still doing the Christian things on the outside.

But here is what I know now, and what I couldn't see then.

You cannot outrun your own inner life. You can drown it out for a while. You can distract yourself for months. You can pack the calendar and stack the podcasts and keep the phone lit and technically nothing goes wrong.

But it doesn't go away. It just goes underground.

And the longer you leave it underground, the more it costs when it finally comes up. Which it always does. Usually at three in the morning when the noise has stopped and you are lying there wondering why your chest is tight.

Read what David wrote in the Psalms. He was not a stranger to noise. He was a warrior king with a nation to run.

The Hebrew for "finds rest" is dumiyyah, which means silence, stillness, a quiet waiting. David is saying, in effect, my soul is silent in the presence of God. Not distracted. Not busy. Not filling the space. Silent.

That was not my life for most of that year.

What eventually broke it was small and almost accidental. I was on a walk with the dog, my headphones died halfway through, and I couldn't be bothered to turn around. So I walked the rest of it in silence. About forty minutes.

By the end I was crying, and I couldn't have told you exactly why. Something had loosened. Something I had been keeping down had come up. And for the first time in months I could actually feel where I was.

That is what stillness does. It surfaces things. That is why we avoid it.

But surfacing things is not the enemy. The things are already there. The stillness just lets you see them. And once you see them, God can actually meet you in them.

He cannot meet you in what you refuse to acknowledge.

If you are in a season where you are filling every silence, I want you to hear this gently, from someone who has been there. It is not fine. It is not sustainable. And the thing you are avoiding is not going to get smaller by being ignored.

Turn the volume down. Even a little. Let something surface. Let God meet you there.

He is very good at meeting people in what surfaces.

YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY

Ask yourself one honest question today.

What am I currently using noise to avoid?

Don't answer it in a hurry. Sit with it for a bit. The real answer usually takes a few minutes to arrive.

OVER TO YOU

What is one thing that surfaced the last time you were properly still? Hit reply. I read every one.

God bless you, my friend.

P.S. Known: Discovering Who God Says You Are is out now. Newsletter readers still get 50% off for a limited time.