My first “real” job after college was working in a call center. We sat in rows of cubicles in pretty close proximity to each other. When one person in the row was sick, everyone in the row got sick. When one person had an angry caller, everyone within three rows knew about it.
One of the hardest things for me to get used to was tuning out everyone else’s conversations so I could listen to my caller. We wore headsets, but could still hear everyone else talking around us… and it was a busy call center, so there were usually a lot of calls going on at once. It was always noisy and distracting. Not only did we have to engage in a conversation with the caller, but we had to navigate several programs on the computer, while also typing thorough notes detailing our conversation.
After a few months of working there, I started going to my car every lunch break and breaking down in tears.
Sometimes I still feel that overwhelming sense of distraction and chaos, especially in my spiritual life. Only now, the distractions are usually disguised as good things, as essential parts of my daily life. Now, the voices around me are my friends, my family, my husband, my child, my coworkers, people on social media, people on the news, people at church, books and blogs I read, shows I watch, music I listen to. All of these, to some degree, are creating noise in my life… all of these are speaking something, and they usually don’t align with each other.
When I first became a Christian almost eight years ago, I was at a turning point in my life. I was leaving one lifestyle and entering a new one. I essentially started over; I cut out nearly everyone from my past so I could focus on making positive changes in my life and following God. I lived by myself and didn’t have cable, and didn’t really have a lot of friends either. I had so much time to spend praying, reading my Bible, reading books, and getting involved at church. For a time, my husband (then boyfriend) was working full-time and going to school full-time, so I didn’t even spend much time with him… my entire life was devoted to pursuing spiritual growth and serving God with my job and at church. I had nothing when I started over… I had no plans for the future, no job, no money… and when you have nothing, it’s so much easier for God to be everything.
Great things started happening in my life… I finished grad school and started pursuing fulfilling work in the nonprofit world. I got married. We moved to a new community and had our first baby. We joined a new church where we didn’t know a single soul. Money was still tight, but the bills were always paid. Life became very comfortable, and God’s voice started to seem quieter. The happier I was and the more comfortable my life became, the harder it was to feel that sense of needing God. I began unintentionally checking out of my relationship with God, and obsessively checking my phone, my calendar, and my Netflix instead.
Without realizing it, I was letting a lot of other voices in… my life was certainly full, but it was full of noise.
Before I got married and we had Spencer, I read my Bible multiple times a day. I carried it around with me and read on my breaks. I read it just for fun. I read it desiring to learn more about how to navigate this life and to understand the meaning of it all. My Bible was full of highlights and pen scribbles and notes.
After Spencer, my Bible sat on a shelf for months. I had no energy to read, and usually didn’t have any arms free. I couldn’t mentally handle any more than just making it through each day. Just reading a few verses felt like a boring task. I would try to read my Bible on my phone while Spencer was sleeping on me or nursing, and I would usually fall asleep within minutes. I wasn’t getting anything out of what I was reading.
However… I had no trouble zoning out on the couch and watching Netflix for hours upon hours. It didn’t feel like a chore to watch a whole season of Grey’s Anatomy in two days. I didn’t struggle to check Facebook and Instagram multiple times a day. It was pretty easy for me to spend an hour or more reading parenting blogs or scrolling Twitter feeds for news articles. My prayers became shorter, and my Bible reading turned into a five-minute nightly habit before falling asleep. I stopped pursuing a daily, close relationship with God and started relying more on the weekly church service to give me my dose of spiritual wisdom. The daily grind, the struggles and successes of raising a baby, the never-ending tasks around the house, maintaining my relationship with my husband, and trying to stay “in touch” with the world around me… the constant noise of all of these things slowly drowned out God’s voice, and instead of seeking his voice first and foremost, I was settling for whatever I could fit in… after everything else.
The problem was… I was content living this way. I was happy. I didn’t even realize I was missing that close relationship with God until all of a sudden, I couldn’t ignore it. All of a sudden, I realized that I no longer felt like I was authentic or intentional with my faith. All of a sudden, I realized that I had replaced Godly wisdom with that of the world. My new Bible was blogs… usually Christian blogs… but blogs nonetheless. My new Bible was Twitter, and Facebook, and Relevant magazine, and shows on Netflix. My new Bible was conversations with friends. I had to take a long hard look at what I was really filling my life with. None of these things are bad things, but… they’re not the Bible. And if I as a Christian am professing to the people around me, and teaching my son, that I believe in God and in the Bible, am I really doing a good job of that by keeping it such a small part of my daily life? If reading my Bible felt like such a chore and God felt so distant, what was I really treating as god in my life?
So, this is where I’m at right now… I’m fully admitting that I’ve fallen off track. I’m right back in my cubicle, struggling to hear God on my headset but being distracted by all of the tempting conversations around me. And it ends now. The other voices in my life will still be there and will always be a part of life… but they don’t have to be the loudest part. Everything, every voice, every noise, every single thing… needs to come second to seeking after God.
Kristen Stewart, Writer 