What Listens When Nothing Answers

There was a season when I believed answers would arrive with sound. A sentence. A sign. A voice that broke the quiet and told me what to do next.

When nothing came, I assumed I was doing something wrong. That silence was punishment. That listening harder might eventually summon a reply.

Silence feels personal until it doesn’t.

One winter I began wearing the same denim jacket everywhere. Not because it meant anything. Because it was there. Because it held its shape. Because it kept the wind off without demanding explanation.

The jacket did not make me braver. It did not make me wiser. It simply made it easier to stand still long enough to notice what was already happening.

Some things do not protect you. They steady you.

A woman once told me about standing at a bus stop after losing her job. She waited thirty minutes. No bus came. She said it was the first half hour in weeks when she was not trying to improve herself.

A man described sitting in his parked car with the radio off and his phone face down. He said he was not praying. He was letting the moment finish before stepping into the next one.

Another spoke about washing the same mug every morning. She said repetition made the days less sharp. Less demanding. She did not call it faith. She called it staying.

None of them heard God. I didn’t either. That was the first clue.

I began to suspect that silence was not absence. It was space. A field where nothing chased me. Where nothing required belief in order to remain present.

The denim jacket wore thin at the elbows. I noticed the wear only because it matched how I felt. Useful. A little tired. Still capable of holding together.

Listening is not waiting for words. It is learning how to remain.

God did not break the silence. And somehow, that became the point. The quiet made room for something else — attention, patience, a willingness to stop performing belief and simply occupy it.

When nothing answers, something still listens. And sometimes that something is enough to keep me from leaving.

If God is silent, it does not mean I have failed to listen. It may mean that listening itself has become the work. And for now, that is enough.