E11 | What God Does in the Silence: Why I Was Gone and What Happened When I Finally Came Back

I was gone for six almost seven months. And if you have ever stepped away from something you loved because life asked too much of you all at once, this episode is for you. 

A new subject I had never taught before. 

A hunger for the Word I could not explain or ignore. 

And healing that does not arrive on a schedule. 

What I discovered is that the seasons that go quiet are not always setbacks. Sometimes they are setups. 

This is where I have been. 

And why I believe God was in every chapter of the silence.

Transcript

Speaker 0:04

What if the season that went quiet was never a setback, but a setup? I've been sitting with that question for a while now, today I wanna talk to you honestly about where I've been and what's been going on, because I was gone for almost six to seven months, and you deserve to know why. Now, before I go any further, I have to tell you something about that phrase 6, 7, 6, almost seven. Put the two words together and it C, it creates chaos. And because as a middle school teacher the moment anyone puts those two numbers together. In the same sentence. The entire energy of the room shifts. All of them. They go crazy. Six, seven, if it talks about a grade six, seven, it, they go crazy. So if you say six and seven in the same breath, and suddenly everyone has an opinion, you're working in a middle school setting. Or even younger. I'm finding the younger kids are saying it too. so, when I say that I've been gone for six to almost seven months, I want you to know that I'm fully aware of what I just did. There's a moment in writing that, that I had to pause and reconsider my word choices. But the teacher in me, couldn't just let it go. I had to acknowledge it because that's what life is about. Those interruptions, the momentary pause, The pulling it together after an interruption like that. That's what this feels like. It's kind of like what this whole episode is about. The things that make you stop, the things that interrupt the momentum, the season that look from the outside, like you just went quiet. They are just not accidents. So let me tell you where I was. Three things happened in this season when I stepped away. Not one dramatic moment, not a single crisis that derailed everything. Three quiet but significant chapters that arrived in sequence together. And that was from my full presence before I could even. Give anywhere else, especially for the podcast. And the first one was a new teaching assignment. I've been teaching for over 20 years, and I know my content, language arts, English, I know my content And at this point I know students and I know how to walk into a room of middle schoolers and make something stick. But this past season I was given something I had never taught before, not unfamiliar content in entirely new course subject area structure. Everything. New approach, new way of getting concepts to land with a specific age group that will let you know immediately and without reservation if something is not working. but there's one thing about knowing consent. It doesn't automatically translate to knowing how to teach it. So those are two different skills and I had to figure out in real time how to build instruction that worked. how to sequence things, how to pace it, how to meet middle schoolers in the middle of a concept they have never encountered before, and actually bring them with me. And no amount of planning prepares you for the actual trenches. You can design the most beautiful lesson in the history of education, and then a 13-year-old will say, or will look at you with a completely blank face, and you realize you have to rebuild the whole thing from a different angle on the spot while taking attendance and the phone is ringing and someone has to go to the clinic. Yes, that's my life and I'm still figuring it out. And I'm proud of that. I'm, because figuring it out means I'm still in it. And here's the second reason. So the second one was hunger. And before you say anything, yes, I know what that sounds like. And no, a pato or your mom's home cooked meal was not going to fix this kind of hunger. This was different. A deep, quiet, can't ignore it. Hunger for the word, not for more content or more strategy, more productivity. Hungry to understand scripture. Not just something I read, but as something I was sticking my life on. so I did what I always do best. I signed up to learn more. I enrolled in the Bible Institute and I started going weekly, and this was in Spanish, along with going to Bible study and what that kind of immersion does to you is hard to describe to someone who has not been in it. You are spending time with God in every sense possible in the classroom, in the study, in the quiet early morning, before you go into a building full of people who will require every single thing you have. Because here is the one thing about teaching middle school, it drains any possible sense. You have left by 11:47 AM in the morning every single day. And then you have four more hours to go and somehow you keep going because that is what teachers do. But the word was the thing that was replenishing something in me that the day kept spending. What I found when I finally made real space for study is that the Bible is the most compelling thing I have ever read. I have said that before. I mean it more now than I did. Then every session gave me more to think about, more, to bring back, more to question, more reason to come back, And honestly, I can't get enough of it. And the third, and this is the one that really took all time and energy, and the third one was healing. Healing does not arrive on a schedule. It does not care about your constant calendar, your doctor appointments. It does not care. What's happening in the classroom or what's happening at home? It does not pause because you have a podcast to record or a lesson to planned or a Bible Institute assignment. It moves on its own timeline in its own layer. And the season I was in held healing. That was happening in every facet of my life at once. in the Bible Institute and at Bible study with students who were showing me things about patients and presence. I did not know. I still needed to learn with friends from church who were new but felt like they had always been there. With old friends who have stood the test of time and know the version of you that existed before all of this, with my pastor, with my mentor, with a dear friend who became my Bible study teacher, and who said the exact right things at the exact right times in a way that could only be called intentional. The healing was not happening in one place. It was happening in all of them simultaneously. Quietly in ways that only make sense looking back. And all of that required my full presence, not a divided version of me, the whole thing. So it was three things. A new subject I was teaching from scratch, A hunger for the word that sent me deep into study and into community and healing that was threading itself through every corner of my life at the same time, none of them felt convenient. None of them felt like preparation while I was inside of them. They felt like a lot arriving at once and for a season I had to choose what I could hold and what needed to wait, and this space waited, not because it didn't matter, because it mattered too. It mattered too much to show up to it halfway. The absence was not abandonment. Not of you, not of this space, not of the calling that brought the living story into existence. It was preparation and some things require your full attention before they will release you into your next chapter. So I'm back More certain than ever that this is exactly where I am supposed to be. And before I ask you to do something, I want you to think about when did you last, give yourself permission to pause. Not to stop, not to quit, not to check out, just to pause, to take one breath between the thing that just happened and the response you're about to give to create one small moment of space between the noise and the next thing. I'm going to guess it's been a while. We live in a world that does not reward, pausing, it rewards producing, moving, responding, performing, hustling, and I've been guilty of it too. And the woman who pauses is the woman who falls behind. At least that is what we have been told. But here is what I have learned both in my classroom and in my own life. The pause is not weakness. The pause is how you locate yourself before you respond to something that matters. One of the things I do when my classroom is spiraling. I give them a countdown, not to punish them, not to control them, just to bring them back to create one collective moment of stillness before we continue onto the next lesson or next part, or even just to get their attention. And I do the same thing one-on-one. When a student is spiraling, I say pause. Take a deep breath. Not just for them, but for me too, because the pause does not just help the person who is spiraling. It helps the person trying to meet them there. There's a word for this in scripture that I've come to love deeply, and it's sayah sayah. It appears throughout the Psalms 74 times, And scholars have debated its exact meaning for centuries. Some believe it's a musical direction, a moment where the instruments pause and the words are allowed to echo. Others believe. It means to pause and reflect, to lift up, to consider what was just said before. Moving on. What I know is this. Every time Sayah appears in the Psalms, it comes after something significant, has been said, something true, something heavy, something worth sitting with before you continue. It is God's way of saying, stop here for a moment. Let that land. I want to bring that practice into this space. Not as a religious exercise, not just not as something you have to do correctly, just as an invitation at certain moments in our time together. I'm going to say Sila, and when I do, I want you to do something simple. Pick up whatever is nearby a pen, your notes app on your phone, a napkin, anything, and write one word. Not a paragraph, not a journal entry, not a stream of consciousness, just one word. the word that just came up for you, the word that is sitting in your chest right now, the word you have been avoiding or the word you have been searching for. Or the word that just arrived like it was always supposed to. And if you're driving right now or taking a walk, that is okay. Hold the word in your mind. Let it sit with you. Come back to it later. Write it down when you can. Follow through on the promise you're making to yourself at this very moment, because a follow through is part of the practice. And one more thing about that one word. Sometimes it stays one word and that's enough, But sometimes one word cracks something open and the word becomes a sentence and the sentence becomes a paragraph, and the paragraph becomes this thing you did not know you needed to say Let it. Do not stop it. Do not edit it before it arrives. Whatever comes is what was already in you waiting for permission to surface. That is what Seila does. It does not create something new. It creates a space for what is already true to finally come forward, because I have found that one honest word written down at the right moment does more For the soul then a hundred words spoken in the wrong direction. sola, write one word. What word describes the season you are in right now? Because what you name, you can begin to understand. And what you understand, you can begin to trust. Here's what I know about the silence. Looking back, God was not absent. He was working in the chapters. I was not broadcasting The new teaching position was not a distraction from my calling. It was part of the story. It asked me to learn something about teaching. I did not know. I was still learning, and the woman who had to build something from scratch and stay in it, even when it was uncomfortable, came back to this microphone with more to say than the woman who left. The Bible Institute and Bible study and the weekly immersion in the word was not me trying to become someone I was not. It was me finally making room for the thing I had been circling. And what I found inside the depth of study is that the God I had said yes to is so much larger and so much more present than I had been giving him credit for. And the healing. The healing was God doing what he does in the quiet, the real deep work, the kind that cannot happen while you are performing or producing or hustling or trying to prove something The kind that needs your full attention and your whole self and a community of people who are willing to sit with you in the middle of it. He was in all of it. The course I was building, the word I was studying, the friends both knew and old who were showing up exactly when they were supposed to. The pastor. My mentor, my Bible study teacher, all of it was placed with intention. When I look back at the last six months, six, seven, I do not see a detour. I see chapters. Chapters I did not choose exactly, but chapters I can now see were being written with intention. The gold thread was running through all of it. I just could not see it yet, so I'm glad you're here. And I'm glad this space still exists and I'm more committed than ever to what the living story is for a space for the woman who is healing and becoming and learning to trust God with her story. even the chapters that went quiet, even the ones that felt like they were going in the wrong direction, if you are in a season that has gone quiet right now, if you have stepped back from something you love and you're not sure if you will find your way back again, I want you to hear this. Quiet seasons are not always endings. Sometimes there are the most important preparation of your life happening in a way that does not look like preparation from the outside. Your story is still being written and the author has not abandoned a single chapter. And I know this episode was pretty long, but I was like gone for six, almost seven months. So, you know. We had some ground to cover. I'm glad to be back and I'm really glad you joined me. You are seen, you are loved, and your story is still being written in God's hands. Until next time, grace and peace.