Walking Anyway: Living with uncertainty, navigating life transitions, and finding faith when life doesn't go as planned

05: When God Feels Quiet

• Denisa O. Nica

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0:00 | 9:42

What do you do when God feels quiet—or silent—in something you’ve been asking God for… and nothing has changed?

If you’ve been praying or waiting—and nothing has changed—and you’re starting to wonder, does God hear me?—this might feel familiar.

In this episode, I talk about what it’s like when God feels quiet—and how to stay in relationship with Him when you don’t feel His presence.

Here on Walking Anyway, we practice faithfully staying with our lives in uncertain seasons.

In this episode:
 – what it feels like when God seems silent
 – the questions that come up when nothing is changing
 – a simple way to stay with God when you don’t feel His presence

If this is where you are right now, this episode might help you keep walking anyway without losing your footing.


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Speaker

I'm Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You are listening to episode 5. This is a podcast about living faithfully in uncertain seasons when life feels unclear and nothing is quite settling yet. If this is your first time listening in, this is a place for anyone carrying questions of any kind and for any reason, and is not quite sure how to move through this in a way that feels steady and true. If this is your experience, you're in the right place to keep walking anyway. Each week I offer a reflection and a simple way to faithfully walk one more step. I'm an author and spiritual director and the founder of The Table, a contemplative space shaped by a weekly rhythm where women practice this kind of faithful living together at their own pace in the middle of their real lives and faith. I live in Spain where life moves a little slower, and that has changed the way I pay attention and the way I live inside my own life. This week I'll share how telling the truth and remembering the past is proving to be an essential part of my own spiritual formation. Listen in. There's something in my life that I've been waiting on for a long time. It isn't abstract, it's actually very concrete. It's something that needs to happen and it hasn't. And I think that's what makes this different. It isn't just a question I'm holding, it's something I can't move forward without. It's been almost four years, and if I'm honest, it's also the place where God has felt quiet. And maybe it's not everything for you either. Maybe it's just one thing, a specific thing that matters, or maybe it's more of a season. Something that has stretched out longer than you thought it would. And somewhere in that stretch, God has felt absent or hard to find, or or just silent. But either way, there's a place in your life where it feels quiet. Over time, that kind of quiet can begin to raise a deeper question. Not just about the situation, but about God. You start to wonder if he's actually present in something you needed him for, or something you've been asking for for a long time, or something that just hasn't happened. This is the place where God feels silent. As I've been sitting with this, I keep finding myself going back to the Psalms. Some of you may already know that I really love them. I actually wrote a book about them. What I love most is that they're not explanations or teaching, they are prayers, real prayers, honest ones, sometimes uncomfortable ones. There's one in particular that names this kind of experience when God feels quiet. Psalm 13 begins like this. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? It isn't a polished prayer and it isn't careful. It simply tells the truth, and if anything, it's a little uncomfortably honest. And I don't know if you've ever had a moment like that, but it reminds me of something C. S. Lewis once wrote. He's one of my favorite writers, by the way. And in his book, A Grief Observed, he describes what it felt like to go to God in his need and to encounter what felt like a door slammed shut and then silence. I think that's why this stayed with me. I even wrote about this once, sitting with that same prayer. You might remember I mentioned earlier that I wrote a book about Psalms. That moment actually became part of it, part of my book, Kairos, When the Holy Meets the Daily. The lines went something like this. I ask you, were my throat and eyes only made for weeping? Questioning how long you think my chest can bear breath. I have hoped. I have wrestled, you would hear. As I said with all of this, I'm noticing that this kind of quiet has always been part of a life with God. And not just for me, and not just for you, but throughout history. If you look at the Psalms or the people who have gone before us, whether long before us or more recently, people like C.S. Lewis, you see it again and again. They felt the absence, they named the silence, and they spoke honestly about not knowing where God was. And at the same time, they didn't walk away. They remained rooted in what they had come to trust, even when their experience didn't match it. Somewhere in that, this is what I'm learning to trust. God's silence doesn't mean he's absent. It doesn't always feel that way. And I'm still learning how to hold that myself, but silence has never been the same thing as leaving. Maybe this is where it becomes a little bit more personal because we don't keep walking by figuring this out. We keep walking anyway, by staying in relationship with God, honestly. And you don't have to be a Christian for a very long time or have read the entire Bible or go to church every Sunday for that to be true. You might try something simple, something like writing your own two-line psalm. You could take that one place, the one that still hasn't resolved, or that situation or season where God has felt quiet, and say to God as honestly as you can, God, I don't understand why this is still here. Or I need you here and I don't know where you are. Just two lines. That's enough. And if you're not sure what you believe about this yet, if even saying it feels uncertain or a little strange, that's okay. You don't have to resolve it before you bring it. After you've said what is true for you, you might add gently, God, I don't feel you here, but I know you are not absent. Not because you feel it, and not because anything has changed, but because that's who he is. And then you continue. You keep walking anyway with a quieter kind of trust, the kind that doesn't depend on how it feels. You may not have answers, but you know that God has not left the building. And somehow, even here, without more information and without a clear way forward, you are not alone. There's something I didn't tell you earlier. That line I wrote, sitting with Psalm 13, doesn't end with, I have hoped, I have wrestled. It actually ends like this. And still, you gave me you. Blessed are we, remembering that you hold all things together, settling into the truth that we are of the earth as you bear up the universe. Thanks for listening to episode 5 of walking anyway. I hope this practice of telling the truth to God and remembering that others have walked the same road before you helps you keep walking anyway, even in the middle of God's silence. Because the way you're walking through this right in the middle of what hasn't settled yet, is already forming something steady in you. If you're wanting a place to actually practice this and not just think about it, you can begin with a 21-day guest seat inside the table. It's a quiet, slow space where you learn to stay with God in your real life and where you don't have to do that on your own. As always, you can find me at danisaonica.com or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica where I post almost daily either a photo or a video on Instagram stories. I'd love to see you there. As you step back into your day, notice what stayed with you. And let that be enough for today. Just like light moving through a room, you don't need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here. I'll leave you with another line from C.S. Lewis. "The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about him altogether or see everything through him. "Thanks for listening, and I'll be here with you next time.