What the Silence Has Been Saying All Along

For a long time, I believed God’s silence was withholding something from me. An answer. A direction. A reassurance I had failed to earn or interpret correctly.

I thought understanding silence meant figuring it out. Translating it. Solving whatever puzzle I had been given.

But silence never responded to effort. It never rewarded persistence with clarity. And it never seemed concerned with my conclusions.

Silence does not explain itself because explanation is not what it offers.

Only later did I begin to notice what had actually changed. Not God. Not the quiet. Me.

I had stopped performing belief. Stopped negotiating for outcomes. Stopped abandoning myself every time nothing happened.

Silence had not been waiting for me to understand God. It had been giving me space to stop leaving.

What feels like absence is often room.

I learned that God’s silence does not mean distance. It means accompaniment without interference. A refusal to interrupt the work of becoming steady.

If God had spoken sooner, I would have kept depending on the sound. I would have mistaken instruction for presence and reassurance for relationship.

Silence did something quieter. It taught me how to remain without bracing. How to listen without scanning. How to stay without needing proof that staying was worthwhile.

God does not interrupt what silence is forming.

Looking back, the denim jacket was never about protection. It was about familiarity. About having something that stayed with me while everything else felt uncertain.

So was the repetition. The routines. The returning. They were not rituals meant to summon God. They were ways of learning how not to disappear.

This is what the silence had been saying all along: You are allowed to be here without performing. You are allowed to remain unfinished. You are allowed to stay even when nothing changes.

You were never being tested. You were being steadied.

God’s silence was not the absence of care. It was the presence of trust.

And once I saw this, the question loosened its grip. Not because I had received an answer, but because I no longer needed one in order to stay.

If God feels silent to you, it does not mean you are lost. It may mean you are being trusted with more space than you expected. Silence is not asking you to understand. It is inviting you to remain.