Consider this during your next breathing moment. Have you ever noticed how many different sounds silence has? Or maybe I should say “qualities” instead of “sounds”. In the past twenty-four hours I have witnessed several different silences.

Yesterday morning I walked out with my children chattering around me into a silent, somewhat overcast morning. I paused because the silence reminded me of something. After a moment of listening, I realized what it was. The silence of the world around me was the silence I’ve felt before. Right before a storm. It occurred to me that Irene isn’t far away and is forecast to hit the North Carolina coast. Maybe that was the silence I was “hearing”.

Of course, everyone along the Eastern Seaboard has their earthquake story. Mine is a little different, and it was my husband who actually gave me the words to express it. I felt the tremor in the earth and stood up because I was at that moment sitting under some shelves. I wasn’t even certain what I’d felt was an earthquake because I live in eastern North Carolina. We just don’t have earthquakes here. Maybe it was the construction site down the road or maybe one of my kids had dropped something. More likely, too, a large truck had passed by. But in the few seconds of silence that followed the tiny trembling of my cabinet doors, I noticed something. A very subtle feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

This morning as I straightened the house, I noticed another type of silence. One of my children has returned to school already. Another one goes back later this week and my daughter’s preschool doesn’t start until after Labor Day, but already my house has assumed that cloak of silence that it gets when your children are away somewhere safe, doing something productive. This silence has a waiting contentment to it. It’s a silence I always forget when my kids are home for the summer, but I welcome it back in the fall.

I apologize for the recent silence of my blog. Life gets in the way sometimes, but take a breathing moment today and listen to the silence.