What to do when nothing happens

What to do when nothing happens. What to do when nothing goes wrong. When life is lived and no one is angry, nothing falls from the tallest building, nothing is louder or quieter than expected. What to do when all seems to be going well and but you feel restless anyway. What to do when you realize things going well means something is not going right, that you do not feel like yourself. What to do when you ah-ha that you’ve learned to live on anger, anxiety and adrenaline, that peace and humility were always the last course of action. What to do when you try humility and it works, and you don’t know what to do because you secretly didn’t want it to work because humility is so hard to feel and use. Ah, but it works so well.

What to do when nothing is happening. What to do when you are in the right place at the right time and no one congratulates you, but you’re not in trouble either. What to do when life is normal and you think maybe this is what everyone else must feel like. What to do when the baby needs the same things he always needs, when friends have a crisis and you can help because you’re not the crisis this week. What to do when you feel like you miss the problems, the drama, the up-in-the-air hours of suspense waiting for someone to tell you the truth.

Sometimes nothing is happening. But that's good too. Really good.

What to do when nothing is happening. What to do when the Normal you complain of not having comes to live in your guest room for a spell and you realize you don’t like it half as much as you claimed. What to do when everyone does the dishes like they’re asked and the argument you braced yourself for turned out to be a head-nodding hug fest where everyone said they were sorry.

What to do when nothing is happening. What to do when you’ve learned to lean into God in the struggles, but in the quiet it seems hard to hear Him. What to do when you feel cranky and cantankerous, but you have no reason like you did last week. What to do when your heart is not breaking, when you are not fiery-red mad like usual, when injustice does not keep you awake at night. What to do when you wonder if God is still molding and shaping you this week because you feel nothing. Nothing at all.

What to do when nothing is happening. What to do when you realize the gift of the calm and the quiet, the blessing of the normal. What to do when you think maybe you should be thankful for the meet and greets that went as planned, car problems that didn’t happen and fighting words that didn’t get yelled. What to do when people catch a glimpse of their destiny and greatness, and you’re there to see it, just as you’d hoped but never really imagined. What to do when you sit in the silence and realize that the nothing is the reward. What to do when you realize God is in this too – in the thunder, in the wind, in the whisper and the still, still nothing too.