Trapped in the Quiet Things

It doesn’t start as darkness.
It starts as quiet.

The comfort we call harmless.
The patterns we keep hidden.
The ache we try to bury—
but it keeps returning.

I lived tangled in quiet addictions—
to the place I disappeared to
until it swallowed my life,
to the praise I thought
would finally be enough,
to food that offered escape
but only deepened the silence inside.

They looked like comfort,
but felt like chains.

They were my favorite things.
My quiet escapes.
The stories I vanished into—
the fantasy life I kept alive
in daydreams,
in a world that dulled the need—
but left me emptier each time.

The things I thought I controlled—
until they controlled me.

They called to me softly.
I gave them space.
Let them soothe me.
Then sealed them back in the shadows—
where no one would notice.

They felt familiar.
Predictable.
Like something I fed in secret,
until they asked for more
than I knew I’d given—
and silently…claimed it all.

Every space I gave,
they filled.
Every bit I surrendered,
they swallowed—
consumed.

Until they grew so loud
there was no room left
for the gifts,
the dreams,
the desires
God had whispered into me.

I couldn’t believe
how far I’d gone.
How tangled it had all become.
I was trapped in the very things
I thought I had under control.

I wanted out.
But I had lived in it so long,
I couldn’t picture
what freedom even looked like.
Still, my heart ached for it.

Freedom didn’t come
when I tried harder—
to bury it,
to contain it,
to will it away.

It came
when I did what made no sense.
I stopped struggling.

I opened my hands
and gave it to You.

That was the moment
everything shifted.
The weight lifted.
The space cleared.
And suddenly,
there was room again—
for beauty,
for hope,
for You.

And I thought to myself,
What if I named it—
the shame I kept hidden?
What if I spoke it aloud—
and someone else began to believe
that God can reach them too?

I don’t have all the answers.
But I know this. He restores.

He reaches into the parts of us
we thought we lost for good
and breathes them to life again.

You’re not alone—
in the silence or the shame.
Your story doesn’t end here.

For those who belong to God
may stumble again and again—
but they will keep rising.
—Proverbs 24:16