the soul that’s wide and deep.

I sit here at my writing desk, laptop open, staring at a blank screen. David has taken three kids to the thrift shop to hunt for Halloween costume accessories, and another kid just wandered outside to the trampoline.

For a few glorious minutes, silence has wrapped itself around my shoulders like my favorite green India-cotton blanket, easing the tension that bunches there. It’s a cool, golden fall day, but still I close my bedroom windows, because my body and soul long for stillness.

It seems like that’s what I crave most these days.  I want to be still. I want to be alone.

I long for a refuge from voices and dogs barking and even the rumble of the lawnmower next door. And stillness is pretty much the hardest thing to come by, in the happy cacophony of my life, with five other people living under this roof, who want my attention, who seem to find a way to interrupt me at perfectly timed intervals. Even when they’re not talking to me, they’re talking. Or shouting. Or fighting with battery-operated light sabers. And if not them, it’s the buzz of a text on my phone or visits from neighbors we enjoy or even just my own tendency to scroll David’s Facebook feed when I’m exhausted (yes I know. I’m a total hypocrite).

I wouldn’t trade this life of abundance, the gift of all these people, for all the silent golden October afternoons in the world. But what’s an introvert to do?

Certainly not drive to a coffee shop. These days I can barely sit still in those crowded, noisy spaces, unable to concentrate, expecting at any moment to encounter someone I know. It makes my skin itchy.

So I don’t have an answer, not yet. Except to seize these stolen quiet moments when I can and use them for something good, something soul-filling like writing a paragraph or two in my journal or reading a book or dropping to my knees in prayer or typing a blog post. The temptation to turn to something soul-sucking instead is great — to check out sales on my favorite websites or browse Pinterest or even just grab my phone and return texts for twenty minutes.

Oddly enough, it’s not even because I’m scared to be alone with myself, in the silence. I’m okay with it. I even enjoy it, feel my soul breathing deep and expanding in even just ten minutes of solitude.

It’s just that the siren call of screens is so alluring. It’s so easy. Even for me, who almost never watches TV or movies and has sworn off Instagram. Somehow my phone still promises an unending supply of shiny images that feel better than my real life, with its piles of laundry and crumb-covered counters and throw pillows strewn across the floor. Again. On my little screen, everything is pretty and shiny and guaranteed to give me a dopamine hit as I check on David’s Facebook likes or tap “buy now” or look at yet another image of an eclectic bohemian living room.

Yet all of this comes at a cost. Even with the boundaries I’ve set for myself, I can tell.

My creativity has waned yet again, my attention scattered, a perpetual discontent rumbling deep in the recesses of my mind when I slow down.

This tells me that my boundaries are not good enough. That my heart is trying to find rest and affirmation in something that disappoints time after time. Like devouring half a bag of Cheetos and ending up with a stomachache.

All the while, my hunger for real rest grows ever greater as my mind and body beg me to help them. To help me. Even when I can’t find quiet in my house, when I can’t even sit down to read my Bible one single time without interruptions, when I hide in my prayer closet only to have a small voice call from the other side of the door, “Mom! What are you doing in there??”

It’s one thing to accept the noise and interruptions of my daily life in a family and in a community. That’s learning contentment, I think. But there are tangible things I can do to help myself in this life.

I can make small choices to turn off my phone and to pick up my journal to reflect on my day or scribble a favorite quote from The Return of the King and tell my children not to knock on the closet door when it’s closed. I can seize the moments of stillness, when they come, as unexpected gifts, and I can open my laptop and write something. Anything. All of this involves the choice to be active rather than passive, to decide the shape I want my life to take and then to run out and grab hold of it.

What I know on this golden October afternoon is that I want a soul that’s wide and deep and stalwart, with roots that stretch and thrive in those secret, quiet ten-minute snatches of time when I have a choice between reaching for my phone or reading a poem.

I’m thankful that it’s never too late to begin again.