Calmed and Quieted

How to stop clamoring and learn to rest in Him

This post was born during the pandemic lockdowns. But what that season exposed in me has outlasted it by years

“…like a weaned child I am content.” Psalm 131:2

When the world went quiet and the calendar cleared, something unexpected happened. Instead of resting, many of us panicked. We refreshed the news. We reorganized closets. We filled the silence with anything we could find, because silence, it turns out, is harder than busy.

I was one of them.

I spent that season finishing my doctoral dissertation, so my version of "lockdown relief" came later than most. When it finally arrived — after my dissertation defense, after the exhale — I wandered for six months. Aimless. Unsure of my direction. Unsure of myself. I couldn't tell what was COVID-exhaustion and what was just me, finally stopping long enough to feel how tired I actually was.

What I learned in that wandering is what I want to offer you here.

First, recognize what the interruption is really offering.

Our busy, task-driven lives are filled with to-do lists, screens, notifications, the constant reaching for the next thing. All of it reinforces an image we're quietly building of ourselves. We rarely stop to ask whether we actually like who we're becoming in the rush.

When that rush was interrupted—for all of us, all at once—it felt like an obstacle. But what if it was an invitation? Not isolation from something, but isolation to Someone?

The interruption might have been the most generous thing God did for us in a long time. The question is whether we received it that way.

Second, rejoice in the weaning.

Psalm 131 is only three verses, but it’s beautiful and mature imagery is striking. David says he has "calmed and quieted" himself, like a weaned child resting against his mother. Not nursing. Not demanding. Just there. Content.

As someone who weaned six children, I know the difference. A nursing child clamors, and a weaned child rests. In the Hebrew culture, the time when the Psalm was written, weaning marked the child’s growth into personhood. It was celebrated.

David is describing a soul that has grown past clamoring. He's no longer consumed with "lofty things"—the big opinions, the urgent news, the need to take on everything. He has simply stilled himself. And he is full.

That's what rest in God looks like. It's not the absence of hard things but the presence of a quiet soul in the middle of them. And it's worth celebrating.

Third, refuse to go back.

When a child experiences the variety and deep satisfaction of solid foods—breads, fruits, meats—they don't go back. The old thing doesn't satisfy anymore. They've grown past it.

The pandemic offered many of us a taste of something we hadn't had in years. Slower mornings, longer conversations, meals without rushing, time to pray without watching the clock. And for one season, that was enough.

Then the gates opened briefly initially and then finally. Most of us bolted.

I understand why. I felt it, too. But watching what happened next in myself and others, I saw the clamor came back almost immediately. The to-do lists refilled. The pace returned. And the quiet, the real quiet we had stumbled into, evaporated. Like it was never there to begin with.

What if we refused? What if we chose, even now, to stay weaned?

Fourth, remain!

David ends the psalm with an exhortation: “Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.”

The Hebrew word for hope is closely tied to the idea of waiting, calling us to embrace this posture both now and for eternity. Waiting in the Hebrew is not passive. It was purposeful, rooted waiting. It was the kind of waiting Israel practiced for four hundred years of prophetic silence before the Messiah came. They didn't know the timeline, and they held on anyway.

Our invitation is the same. Regardless of what the calendar looks like, what the news says, what the next season brings, we are called to remain. We are called to stay rooted in him and let the world rush past while we rest.

This isn't laziness. It is the bravest possible response to a culture that profits from our restlessness.

The noise isn't neutral but is curated to keep us moving, spending, striving.

Everywhere we turn, something is trying to tell us we're behind. It's on the screens, the signs, even the gas pumps. All the marketing is designed to find the tender place in us that feels like it is not enough, and then press on it. The noise isn't neutral but is curated to keep us moving, spending, striving. We consume and respond without realizing it until we stop.

The psalmist saw this coming. Everything David describes with the haughty eyes, the lofty ambitions, the restless soul is just an ancient version of what modern research now confirms: our distracted hurried lives are making us unwell.

Weaning for us may look like logging off an hour earlier, letting the workday actually end, sitting down to a meal without a screen, or choosing the slower thing when the faster thing is right here.

But none of that is sustainable without trust.

Do you know him as Provider? Do you trust him as Protector? Do you believe he has your best interest at heart and wants good for you?

If you answer yes, even a shaky, uncertain yes, rest is possible. Not as a reward for getting everything else done, but as a gift from a God who has already taken care of what you cannot.

The weaned child doesn't earn the mother's arms but rest in them. She receives them.

So can we.

If this resonated with you, I'd love to keep the conversation going. You can reach me anytime at [email protected] — I'd love to hear from you.

And if you want to go deeper into what it means to live loved by the Trinity, my upcoming book You Were Made for This: Living in the Love of the Trinity was written for exactly that.