Full disclosure: As I sit here and witness these words appearing, I realize they’re just as much for me as they are for you.

Trust is a tiny, fierce creature, always begging for your attention, then settling delicately in your belly once acknowledged. It’s the breath in every decision you make. That’s why some choices feel full and expansive, while others feel tight and constricted. That’s trust breathing or suffocating.

As we slow and turn inward for the cozy winter months, despite holidays and to-do lists, our energy longs to shift from a boil to a simmer. Our inner lives grow quiet. God grows quiet. The earth grows quiet. It’s easy to trust the desires and guidance that arrive loud and clear. Their boldness reassures us. But what about when our own sacred voice whispers or doesn’t speak at all?

The spiritual path has always been punctuated by times of quiet. Sue Monk Kidd likened it to the rich silence of a cocoon. Saint John of the Cross called it a dark night of the soul. No matter what metaphor resonates, they have one thing in common: trust. Trust that the cocoon will dissolve and life will emerge. Trust that the sun will rise. Trust that newness germinates under the surface of silence.

Trust requires you to settle into your life as pilgrimage, not a race.
It’s a practice of pouring love into the quiet instead of fear,
of choosing to smooth desire into the silence,
of tenderly sheltering the embers of your inner life so they can blaze into flame,
of surrendering to the cycle of gestation, birth, life and death,
of asking for what you need and accepting the gifts that follow,
of remembering that every molecule of your being belongs to the Light,
of unmooring your expectations and sending them out to sea,
because wherever love brings you, it sustains you.

Greater is the Divine in you than any other force. Trust the quiet.

photo by Chelse Thompson.