When God Speaks in the Silence

There’s a season for pouring into others, and a season for listening to what’s been poured into you.

For many years, I walked the path of a teacher—pouring energy, compassion, and hard-earned wisdom into the lives of others. It was a calling I never questioned, until the voice inside—the one I hadn’t heard in decades—began to rise again.

That voice wasn’t telling me to stop teaching.
It was inviting me to return to something I had buried long ago: writing.

The Play I Wrote… and the One I Didn’t

In grade school, I wrote a play. Just a small story in a child’s handwriting—dreamed up with the kind of boldness only a young imagination can hold. My teacher, bless her, didn’t just pat me on the head. She made the whole class perform it.

It should have been a joyful, affirming moment.
But instead, it silenced me.

My classmates laughed. They told me I didn’t write it. Called me a liar. Made fun of the words I had so lovingly put to the page. And in that strange way childhood wounds do, I absorbed it. I believed them. I stopped sharing my writing.

Not all silence is holy.
Some of it is survival.

I learned to hide the parts of me that felt too tender for ridicule. I learned to be “smart” instead of creative. To teach instead of tell. To pour out what was expected, not what was burning inside me. And yet, even in all those years of silence, my passion burned and God never stopped listening.

A New Season

Now, I find myself in a season I never quite expected—a season of freedom and time. The kind I used to dream of but never thought would be mine. I’m no longer bound by the rhythms of survival or the need to prove my worth. Instead, I find myself sitting with that younger version of me—the girl who wrote a play—and letting her speak again.

Writing now isn’t about proving anything.
It’s about reclaiming what was always mine.
And more importantly, what God never asked me to give up.

“See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” — Isaiah 43:19

Sometimes God speaks through silence—not to quiet us, but to draw us back to our truest voice. The one He planted long before others tried to reshape it.

So here I am. Writing. Reflecting. Creating The Pondering Place not as a platform, but as a space of restoration—for me and for anyone else who has ever been silenced, softened, or shut down.

If any part of your voice has been quieted—by fear, shame, or just the busyness of life—know that God still hears it. And He may be whispering: It’s time.