Throughout a period of overwhelming physical and mental pain, I pleaded with heaven for help. Nothing came. No inspired ideas, no words of consolation, no feelings of comfort.

I was devastated—but also confused. Why, at the threshold of a God who gives good gifts and repeatedly tells us to “ask, seek, and knock,” did I feel like no one was answering the door?

I didn’t believe heaven’s silence meant neglect. But what did it mean?

Around that time, I encountered a concept one author calls “divine quietness.” A few takeaways from her insightful book changed the way I pray, especially in my quietest hours.

In her book Divine Quietness, Emily Robison Adams writes, “Our God is one who repeatedly asks us to assess where we are and move closer to Him. This is a God who invites thinking and rethinking.”

Have you ever considered heaven’s silence as an invitation to rethink? I hadn’t.

President Russell M. Nelson taught that the Lord continually invites us to renew and reshape our ideas, habits, relationships, and beliefs. Nothing about our eternal selves is meant to remain unchanged—not when the Savior promises growth for everything we bring sincerely into His light.

Honest introspection requires immense humility. To discard old habits, embrace new ideas, and recommit to relationships is to engage in the ongoing construction of the soul. But what transformative invitations to be found in heaven’s silence.

For me, rethinking carried me beyond the narrow misery of my symptoms and into a wider, truer view of our heavenly parents’ compassion. I began to see heaven’s silence less as absence or reproof. It started to feel more like a knowing nod: unspoken, empathetic reassurance when there was no way out but through.

Adams also asserts that silence stimulates growth. From beneath the soil to within the soul, most growth is imperceptible and quiet. If your prayers feel met with silence, perhaps it is because seedlings of truth and change need time to germinate within your mind and heart.

Periods of divine quietness, often accompanying our hardest struggles, can cultivate Christlike traits in their truest forms. Patience, gratitude, and compassion rarely grow in comfort. They mature through difficulty, becoming the divine gifts that symbiotically strengthen us as we reach to lift others.

I cannot overstate the value of this kind of growth. The truth of it opened my soul with such gentleness. How much more prepared was I, after my experiences, to succor those around me when they endured a familiar pain?

My spiritual growth didn’t feel very spiritual at the time. But I think that’s because I’d limited my search for solace to a feeling.

Adams writes that in her experience, sometimes, “the all-consuming focus on what [she] was feeling crowded out the lessons [she] could learn from God in a quiet space. Feeling something is a gift, but the absence of feeling is not necessarily a curse. Rather, it can be an invitation to relate to God in a different way.”

Ever since reading this book, I’ve changed the way I pray. When revelation, or my own words, for that matter, are slow to come, I’ve taken the Lord’s quietness as an invitation to simply come and sit with Him.

Words neatly divide and contain ideas. Silence loosens those boundaries. When we release our expectation that revelation comes as words or feelings, our relationship with God can become profoundly real; prayer then feels like sitting with an old friend. Truth and trust are there, in everything unspoken.

This doesn’t mean that communing with God is always easy.

“I feel resistance to God,” Adams confessed. “I fear what I will find if I look too closely, or if I allow God to get too close to me. So often I cover these fears with words, with prayers about my standard set of worries—family, friends, and work. But sitting in silence and inviting God to join me is a different kind of prayer; for me, that requires more vulnerability. It is a harder prayer. … We can engage in this kind of prayer by ‘simply inviting God to join us at whatever empty chair we see or can imagine, opening our heart to let Him come close and sit with us as we wrestle with a problem, or feel sad, or just stare in wonder at the night sky.’ This is a type of prayer I had never thought about before.”

Next time you’re at a loss for words, next time heaven feels quiet, let yourself absorb the silence. Let yourself fully experience it. Explore the quietness as an invitation, an unspoken knowing, a true moment of communion.

Maybe silence is what heaven knows you need most.

A book for when heaven feels silent

Do you ever feel like your sincere, heartfelt prayers are ignored or met with silence? Do you wonder why a loving God would ever refuse to answer? Divine Quietness explores the reasons God sometimes answers our prayers with silence, in spite of our best efforts. This thoughtful new book will help you learn to rethink your assumptions underlying what it means to have faith and how to connect with God even in quietness.

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