This week, the world felt like it was in the middle of a collective reset. Between the start of Ramadan and the solemnity of Lent, communities everywhere were called to fast and find a different kind of focus. On my social feeds, I saw people cleaning, decluttering, or announcing their total exit from the digital space. For the 1st time in 163 years, Ramadan, Lent & Lunar New Year aligned within 24 hours. Billions of us are exhaling at the exact same time. It's no wonder the world feels loud, we are all fighting for the same silence.
In the midst of all this resetting, I decided to do something heavy: I wrote about grooming and predatory behavior.
At work, I was putting out team “fires”, spiritually, I was sitting with a heavy topic, socially, everyone seemed to be detoxing, simplifying, and quieting down. It was a stark reminder that the world’s noise and the call for stillness have to find a way to coexist; life won't always just go quiet for you.
In a week many deem sacred and holy, I wondered if I was adding noise by tackling something so heavy. When the feedback didn’t immediately come, I was met with a loud silence. But in that quiet, I realized something: People read in their own time. Seeds grow in their own time. What shifted more noticeably for me was my appetite for social media.
Every time I opened an app, I closed it within minutes, the content no longer served me. Watching random people’s lives (especially celebrities) no longer felt normal. It felt like staring into an aquarium where all the fish species are crowded into one oversized glass tank. Constant movement. Constant stimulation. I wasn’t tired, I was overstimulated. Not physically exhausted, spiritually noisy. My mind, body, and soul were asking me to cut through the noise and sit in silence. So I did.
Here’s what I’m learning: Cutting through the noise isn’t about extreme isolation (although sometimes it is). It’s not abandoning responsibility, it’s not ignoring heavy topics, it’s not pretending the world isn’t loud. It’s about listening to what your spirit needs and creating pockets of prayer, a "forcefield" you carry with you into the office, the school, or even your own home. It’s creating pockets of intentional silence when the world refuses to quiet down.
Because if you don’t turn the TV off, close the laptop, or let the phone ring, you will be consumed by everyone else’s soul cries.
And if you’re like me, sometimes it’s not even your personal problems weighing you down. It’s the problems of the world. The injustice. The heaviness. The constant access. That’s a noise hangover and you have to learn to breathe from that too. For me, writing that heavy blog was part of that balance. Because it occupied my heart, I had no room for social media antics. Instead, I had a "Coffee Date with God," I poured out my thoughts, my concerns, my joys, my tears and a couple of laughs. I turned off everything else and refilled my soul with God's presence.
This week I went back to walking to the creek. It’s not the prettiest right now, the greenery isn’t greening, the tide isn’t high. It’s ordinary. But I needed to see something man didn’t create. Something untouched by algorithms, something not curated, something that required a higher power. Creation recalibrates perspective. It reminds you that there is a Bigger Story happening beyond your inbox, your timeline, your deadlines. When I see water move without permission from man, I remember I am not the center of the universe, and that is freeing.
Writing such a heavy blog meant I had no capacity left for social media antics. That space had to be sacred. That’s how you cut through the noise. Not by silencing the world, but by knowing where to go when it gets loud.
And that night, after the blog and Coffee date escape, God being God, gave me the sweetest wink.
It was about 3am. I couldn’t sleep, so I turned on an episode of The Jeffersons to drift off. While half-watching, I found myself thinking about my Coffee x Convo segment, wondering if the previous topic would reach the people it needed to reach. Right in the middle of the episode, Louise turns to George and says:
“There’s nothing wrong with coffee and conversation.”
Now that may not mean anything to you. But to me? That was confirmation. A humorous inside joke between me and God. A reminder that God sat with me in the silence. That God heard me. That impact doesn’t depend on noise or numbers, it depends on obedience.
And that is how you cut through the noise to sit in the silence, not by escaping life, but by knowing Who sits with you in it who would guide you through the noise.