There’s a particular unease that arrives when life finally goes still – a hush that feels less like peace and more like an expectant silence. For many of my clients, and for myself this past week, that stillness wakes old patterns: anxiety, worry, the familiar inner chatter that hopes the noise will finally get our full attention.
The discomfort of quiet
When the outer world softens, the inner world can grow loud. Those old echoes – “What if…”, “I should have…”, “When will this end?” – return not because they are new, but because they want to be seen. They press for attention as if their persistence will force a different outcome. That pressure feels heavy, and it can make stillness feel unsafe rather than sacred.
The slow work of silence
But there is another movement in the same silence: a gradual filling of the spaces unease once occupied. As the outer noise recedes, the silence does not rush to fix us; it simply creates room. In that room a posture of waiting, openness, and expectation can grow – not frantic hope, but a steady readiness to receive what is being formed inside us.
Regulating the inner weather
When you keep balance in your emotional world – when you notice the waves, breathe through them, and regulate your own responses – something beautiful happens. The body relaxes enough for the heart to listen. The mind softens enough for curiosity to replace panic. This is not denial of pain; it is a disciplined tenderness that allows transformation to begin.
The potter and the clay
Think of it like a potter at the wheel: stillness and God’s guidance on the inside are like the potter’s hands on expectant clay. The hands do not hurry the clay; they shape, press, stretch, and steady it until it becomes what it was meant to be. As Jeremiah reminds us:
Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.
And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Jeremiah 18:3–4, 6 (KJV)
That image holds both gentleness and authority: we are being formed, not abandoned.
A personal note and a hope
This past week I felt those unearthed storms – unanswered questions, worldly noise – and I was surprised by how my body and emotions responded. Old patterns rose, as they always do when the ordinary is disrupted. Yet I was also reminded that I still matter enough to be worked on; that God’s shaping is ongoing. Change has often come to me as tumultuous waves, and each time I have found that the stillness afterward is where newness takes root.
If you are in that place now, know this: the echoes of anxiety are not the final word. The silence you fear can become the space where you are held, stretched, and remade. Keep practicing the small acts of regulation – a steady breath, a kind thought, a boundary kept – and watch how the potter’s hands, steady and sure, bring shape and beauty from what once felt formless.
– Heartprints in Motion