I used to think I would always recognize God by the fire. 

By the moments that left me undone. By the tears that came so easily in worship. By the unmistakable feeling that He was near. I knew how to find Him when He felt loud. 

I don’t know that I know how to find Him when He whispers. 

The last few months have been a blur of hospitals, diagnoses, fear, uncertainty, medications, healing, survival. Somewhere in the middle of trying to stay alive and stay sane, I think I became numb to my own life. It wasn’t intentional. I think my mind simply did what it had to do. 

There are seasons where surviving is the only prayer you have left. 

And maybe that’s enough. 

But now something is changing. 

I’m getting steadier. 

My body is slowly recovering. My mind is beginning to settle. The chaos that demanded every ounce of my attention has quieted, and in its place is…silence. 

It’s strange. 

I thought once the crisis ended, I would feel relief. Joy. Passion. Gratitude spilling out of me. 

Instead, I feel quiet. 

Sometimes it’s almost too quiet. 

I told God the other day that I miss the fire. I miss the passion. I miss the overwhelming awareness of His presence that once seemed so familiar. 

Yet when I go to pray, I find it hard to even approach Him. 

I don’t entirely know why. 

Maybe because numbness doesn’t disappear the moment the danger does. 

Maybe because God is teaching me something I couldn’t have learned in the fire. 

I’ve begun wondering if His silence isn’t absence at all. 

What if it’s an invitation? 

Not an invitation to chase another emotional high or manufacture an experience that feels spiritual. Not to create a version of God that only exists when I feel Him. 

But an invitation to seek Him. 

Just Him. 

It’s easy to mistake emotional intensity for intimacy. 

Sometimes we become addicted to the feeling of God instead of God Himself. 

But feelings are beautiful servants and terrible foundations. They come and go with circumstances, hormones, exhaustion, grief, healing. 

God doesn’t. 

Maybe that’s why this season feels so unfamiliar. 

Because He’s teaching me to stop listening for Him long enough to begin looking for Him. 

And I’ve started seeing Him everywhere. 

In the sunlight spilling across my living room. 

In the birds that seem completely unconcerned with tomorrow. 

In the quiet rhythm of making tea. 

In the breeze moving through the trees. 

In the deep breath my lungs can finally take. 

In ordinary Tuesday afternoons that would have once felt unbearably insignificant. 

I’m beginning to realize that He has always been here. 

I was just moving too quickly and too erratically to notice. 

Or perhaps I was hurting too deeply to see. 

The hidden places are funny like that. 

God has a habit of meeting people there. 

Not always on mountaintops. 

Sometimes in the deserts. 

Sometimes in the prison cells. 

Sometimes beside hospital beds. 

Sometimes in the ordinary homes where nothing miraculous seems to be happening except that a weary soul decides to keep looking. 

I wonder if slowing down wasn’t a punishment after all. (Though I really questioned that for a time.)

Maybe it was mercy. 

Because left to myself, I would have kept running. 

Kept distracting. 

Kept filling every quiet space with some noise, because it’s all I had come to know. 

Instead, my body forced me into stillness. 

It stripped away so much of my independence, so much of my routine, so much of what I thought made me…me. 

And now all that’s left are these quiet days. 

Days where the greatest miracle isn’t something dramatic. 

It’s noticing. 

Noticing beauty. 

Noticing breath. 

Noticing grace. 

Noticing that God has never actually stopped speaking. 

Maybe He’s simply speaking a language I’ve forgotten how to hear. 

Or maybe He’s asking me to stop trying to hear Him altogether and learn to see Him. 

To recognize Him in creation. 

In kindness. 

In peace that arrives without explanation. 

In the slow healing of both body and soul. 

There is a strange tension I can’t quite explain. 

Part of me wonders if this numbness is simply my nervous system finally exhaling after months (years if I’m really honest) of holding its breath. 

A reprieve. 

A mercy. 

Another part of me wonders if I’ll ever feel deeply again. 

It’s a strange place to live-grateful beyond words to be here, yet unable to fully access the emotions I expected to accompany that gratitude. 

I don’t have neat answers for it. 

I only know that if my life has taught me anything, it’s this: 

God does some of His deepest work where certainty ends. 

He seems remarkably comfortable in places that make us uncomfortable. 

In waiting. 

In hiddeness. 

In unanswered questions. 

In slow healing. 

In letting go. 

In silence. 

The world tells us that if God is moving, it will be obvious. 

Scripture seems to tell a different story. 

A mustard seed. 

Yeast hidden in dough. 

Treasure buried in a field. 

The Kingdom has always loved hidden places. 

So maybe this season isn’t evidence that I’ve lost God. 

Maybe it’s evidence that He’s inviting me to know Him differently. 

Not through adrenaline. 

Not through constant emotional intensity. 

But through faithful attention. 

Through choosing to seek Him when nothing inside me feels spectacular. 

Through finding Him in sunshine. 

In birdsong. 

In stillness. 

In the sacredness of ordinary life. 

In the ordinary rhythms of a life I almost lost. 

Because maybe that’s what faith looks like when it grows up.

Not louder. 

Deeper. 

And if this quiet season is where He teaches me to recognize His fingerprints instead of relying on His voice, then maybe the silence isn’t empty after all. 

Maybe it’s Holy.