When Quiet Becomes a Need (Not a Luxury)
Somewhere along the way, quiet stopped being a preference for me and started becoming a need.
Not the spa-day kind of quiet. Not the “I’ll get to that someday” kind. The kind that, if I don’t have it—even briefly—I can feel myself unraveling in small but real ways. Shorter patience. Shallower breaths. A sense that I’m moving through my life without fully inhabiting it.
I don’t know if this is age (I’m 42), temperament, or the cumulative effect of raising five children inside a loud, beautiful, constantly moving home. Probably all of it. What I do know is this: noise used to energize me. Now it drains me. And if I don’t intentionally step into quiet, I start living reactive instead of rooted.
So I take it wherever I can get it.
Ten minutes alone has become holy ground. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I don’t say anything at all. I just sit and look out the window—at birds hopping across the yard, or my kids bouncing wildly on the trampoline, their laughter muffled by the glass. I’m not escaping them in those moments. I’m steadying myself so I can return to them whole.
I’ve also learned—slowly, reluctantly—that scrolling doesn’t do the same thing.
My phone promises rest, but it rarely delivers it. I can sit in silence with a screen in my hand and still feel overstimulated, more tired than when I started. My body doesn’t soften. My breath doesn’t deepen. Quiet gets crowded out by headlines, comparison, and other people’s lives. It looks like rest. It just isn’t the kind that restores me.
And that’s how I’ve started to notice the difference. Some activities leave me more scattered than before, while others quietly knit me back together. The surprising ones aren’t always the ones that look restful on the surface.
Even the most ordinary tasks have begun to feel quietly sacred. Folding laundry, for instance, has quietly become one of my most grounding rituals. It’s productive, yes—but it’s also rhythmic. The familiarity of my children’s clothes moving through my hands slows me down in a way scrolling never does. I often find myself praying for them without planning to—small, unfinished prayers that rise up as I fold. Something in me settles there. Something gathers instead of fragments.
I’ve learned that quiet doesn’t always mean silence. Sometimes it’s presence. Intention. A decision to slow the pace just enough to feel my own body again. A candle lamp glowing on the counter while dinner simmers. Sunlight spilling across the front hall in the late afternoon, turning an ordinary pass-through space into something that asks me to pause. These aren’t big gestures. But they interrupt the rush. They remind me I’m allowed to stay with my life, not just manage it.
And I want to be clear: I love a full house. I love people. I love hosting and noise and a table crowded with voices. This isn’t about withdrawal or becoming precious about solitude. It’s about learning what sustains me within the fullness. I don’t need less life. I need quiet braided through it—real quiet, not the counterfeit kind.
This morning in South Carolina, we woke up to four inches of snow—rare enough here that everything slows. I stood at the window watching red cardinals cross the white yard, and I felt myself pause without trying to. Beauty has a way of doing that. It interrupts the rush. It invites stillness without demanding it.
Quiet doesn’t always arrive because we seek it. Sometimes it meets us through beauty, asking only that we pay attention.
If your life feels full—beautiful and exhausting all at once—where could you allow a little real quiet to land today? Not later. Not when things calm down. But right in the middle of it.
Because not everything that feels like rest actually restores us.
God, help me notice what restores me, and give me the courage to choose it—even in the middle of a full life.
Read more in my series: Habits That Hold Us When Life Is Full—a gentle exploration of sustainable rhythms that support busy moms through full seasons of life.
