I can hear the second hand ticking away on my office clock. It’s pretty much that quiet in my house all day every day (well, 6:30am through 3:10pm, Monday through Friday, September through May – which is now).

I tend to love quiet. I just heard a great line in a movie I was watching last night…”what I would give for just a handful of quiet…” Okay, I don’t tend to love quiet. I outright-with-full-abandon love quiet.

But right now, things are too quiet. Things are quiet creatively for me. I just finished my first novel only to find out a day later, by doing a little tangential internet research, that novels are typically around 80,000 to 100,000 words long. Ummm, o-kay. So what I finished then was a novella, not a novel. I’d be okay with that except publishers apparently don’t even give first glances to novellas. So, how do I take a book that I thought was done and, you know, double it? I don’t know. No idea. Thus the creative quietness.

Things are quiet in an important relationship of mine where I had to speak the truth in love, say a very difficult thing, and now I am suffering on the quiet end of the silent treatment. This was predicted but it’s not ever welcome. And it’s driving me ever-so-slightly batty. Though I’m sticking to my guns because I have truth on my side and I did the right thing no matter how long the quiet lasts. And quiet can last long when you’re not the one who chose it. But still, this kind of relational quiet can be an icky kind of quiet.

But then there’s the good quiet.And I’ve got that going in spades right now, which, gratefully balances out the rest.I’ve got sweet moments with both of my kids the past few days…tender touches and knowing sighs and perfect words exchanged in person, via email, via texts from dear, dear friends today and yesterday and the day before…

And then there’s Jesus. The way He swoops in to save the day sometimes is just beyond me. He and I have this thing with the Psalms. Now, I’m not recommending this as a really great theological tool to find the answers to all your problems, but it helps me. A lot. If I’m stuck or sad or blah or angry, I’ll hold my Bible in my hand and say something like, “Got anything for me right now?” and a number will come to mind. And I go to that Psalm. And nine times out of ten it’s spot on for what I’m going through or feeling and it brings quiet reassurance that the God of the universe knows. You know…knows. Knows me. Knows my heart. Knows my circumstance or predicament or rock and a hard place that I inevitably, continually find myself in. He knows. This is the good kind of quiet, the best kind of quiet.

So, I love quiet. Even when it’s hard and fuzzy and frustrating. Because in the quiet, I can hear what’s most important.