The clock ticks methodically on the living room wall - one sound making you deaf if you focus on it. Everyone sleeps under heavy down and only the dog stirs as I watch the coffee pot and listen to its inner workings. It’s a beautiful sound, but it has to be watched.
That coffee pot.
I watch it carefully because yesterday morning it betrayed me. The coffee firmaments opened up and poured black judgement on the counter and in the drawer and down to the floor.
So this morning I stand watch over the traitor. He cooperates smugly as if never a drop was misplaced.
I pour my cup and grab my supplies and once I’ve let the dog back in, once he’s trotted back upstairs to nose under someone’s down comforter, I’m alone. Just me and Jesus and words.
The clock ticks.
It’s quiet communion.
It’s the reason I’ve inched my alarm backwards minute by minute, gaining time as I go. You can trade your sleep for quiet when you’re desperate for it.
But I am desperate for a quiet that stays when the sun rises. When the children rise and the piles rise and the noise levels rise and the tension.
I want quiet to come with me into my days.
I am the librarian shushing, the ocean lapping, the deafening minute-hand ticking time and gaining it. But losing quiet.
…the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.” 1 Peter 3:4
Very precious.
A million decibels piercing my ear but only words pierce my heart. Quiet, the noun, is precious to me. Quiet, the adjective, is precious to Him.
I can be deaf to all the quiet I want desperately to hear.
So I take quiet into the day.
The clock ticks heavy and I gain quiet with its second-hand. I gain time with minutes passing and gain quiet with thousands of words, thousands of loves, millions of decibels.
Clanging symbols cease. Seconds tick.
#TellHisStory, Imperfect Prose, #writealm, The Wellspring, Just Write