My husband didn’t pack his bags for another woman. He departed suddenly, like an untimely death. He told me he had suffocated in our silence. The raw truth was, he was drowning in the noise of the modern era—or perhaps the punchline of it. We had the house with a massive kitchen island built to draw interest in what’s cooking? But conversation rarely ignited as our mortgage felt like a heavy stone around our necks. We had two cars that took us in different directions.  We streamed and we scrolled through the lives of others but not our own.  Our brains had the glow of a crackling wild fire from the constant flickering light off our lit screens. For several years we hadn’t really been in the room with each other. He was engaged in sports and politics in their comment sections. Our interests were sparked like a riot in different corners of the internet. Phantom profiles of fake people voicing opinions. What strangers thought miles away was fascinating, but not what mattered. Our relationship was off topic. Random conversations about our dog, or what color our neighbors were painting their house.  News reports felt like lectures about what the mob was doing. What “they” were hiding about our food supply without knowing who exactly “they” were. As the world turned according to the day’s algorithm, the  villain changed. I felt exhausted—and spiritually drained.

I was tired of walking on eggshells, and terrified that mentioning the price of milk would trigger a 30 minute rant about globalist agendas and economic collapse. So the sudden death of our union was not really too much of a surprise. My mate stood at the door with his  bag, looking like a mid-life crisis imploding, I didn’t even cry. His words revealed a chaos that had been silently brewing.  “I can’t just sit here anymore”, he said, his voice tight. “I need to find something real. I need to be with people who are ‘awake.’ You are just sleepwalking, happily in the garden while the world burns.” He left crying out that it was time for his “journey in search of solutions.” He drove off toward the mountains to join a group he’d found online. A place where “sovereignty still mattered.” My rapid response, “And what about us?” His quick reply was stunning. “I have to save myself first.”  I thought that we were saved by Jesus! He raged further, “You should wake up. The end is coming!” Our front door slammed shut. The car revved and he was gone, like the sudden death of a heart attack.

The sound of silence was like a chill in the hallway.  I waited for the crushing weight of being a 52-year-old abandoned wife. Instead, I heard something else. The purest of silence had been missed for a long while. “Be still and know that I am God.” Okay, okay, the TV wasn’t blaring a 24-hour news cycle about a crisis after crisis that  I could never fix. The phone pings of alerts about the latest outrage was like a cease fire. The air no longer felt like it was vibrating with anxiety anymore. The empty room whispered, “sit, relax, and surrender it all to God.” By the second month, I realized something: We had been working ourselves to death to maintain a lifestyle that was actually making us miserable. I looked at our big house; it was a museum of things we bought to impress people we didn’t even like. It was a warehouse for stress. So, I did the unthinkable. I sold it fully furnished. My friends were shocked as I left the tangle of high tech. I bought a small cottage in a quiet field in the country where internet access was sketchy. With a yard that drank in the morning sun, and a loyal dog that was delighted by the birds that flew above the world worries, my soul spread out with open arms to rest “in Jesus”, my Lord and Savior.

I stopped watching the news. I figured if the world truly ended, someone would eventually knock on my door to let me know.  Peace is priceless so I cancelled all notifications and bought an old analog radio that only caught the local folk station. I started real time baking out of an old recipe book with my mother’s old recipe cards, fully stained with butter and vanilla. There was something holy about kneading dough. You don’t argue with flour; you just had to be present with it and roll with it. One day wifi went down in the whole county. A year ago, this would have been a catastrophe. Now? I just made a pot of tea and sat with my dog delighting in the serenity. A young woman walked by, pushing a stroller looking frazzled, with a headset in her ear. She stopped when she saw me sitting there in the quiet.
“Is your power out too?” she asked, pointing to her dead phone. “No signal.” Joyfully I invited a stranger to engage in a face to face. “Would you like a piece of blueberry cobbler? It’s still warm.” She looked at me as if I were a ghost. Then, she looked at the cobbler. She tapped her headset off. “Yes, that looks yummy!” Her shoulders finally dropped as she flopped into an old easy chair on my patio. We didn’t talk about the upcoming election or the housing market. We talked about the best way to grow gardenias. We talked about how her baby was finally sleeping through the night. We talked about the way the air smells right before a rain. For an hour, we were just two humans. Not “users, voters, and demographics. Just people eating cobbler. She smiled, “It feels so slow here, I think I remember this feeling from when I was a kid. I forgot it was allowed.” Yes, I told her the truth. “It’s not a memory, it’s the Lord God Almighty’s holy presence. We didn’t lose it; we just stopped choosing it.” A peace that surpasses anything this broken world can ever offer.

The most awake moment occured when my spouse called. The signal was terrible as he called from a motel somewhere in the desert. He reported that the “community” had fallen apart—too much ego, too many arguments, and no one wanted to do the actual work of living. He admitted that it was chaos at a very different level. He sounded weary as he grumbled that the world is falling apart and that he could not even   get enough bars to upload his bank statement. I looked around the kitchen as I apologized that his journey to find what mattered ended in such a disaster. There was a basket of eggs from the farmer down the road as the radio played a soft cello mellow tune. My window was open, and I could hear the wind whistle through the cornfield.  I wasn’t asleep, I was more awake than I had ever been. I said softly. “I have sized down to simply live and enjoy all that God has granted and I pray that the Lord gives you His peace.” Still in a frantic mode, he replied, “But how can you just live when so much is at stake?” His shrill voice. “Don’t you care about the future?” Calmly I assured, “I am building my faith to embrace the future that God has planned for us from the very beginning.  As I keep my focus on Him, my loyal Provider and Prince of peace, I now enjoy extending kindness to my new neighbors.  I refuse to let the noise of this broken world inside my heart.” As he does not seek peace, he hung up to go chase another outrage, another digital battle. I put the phone down and did not check to see if I got his outaged WhatsApp. I didn’t check the stock market to see if I should be afraid. I went back to the dough on my counter and prayed for him. I pressed my hands into it, feeling the rhythm of God breathing peace through me. Trusting that my prayers are heard,  knowing it is His way to allow soul’s to wander, I trust that He will guide my man back into His arms.

We spend so much time shouting for a better world that we forget to build a decent life. We think freedom is having a million voices in our pockets. But I found the truth in a comfy casa with no Wi-Fi. Freedom isn’t about escaping the world. It’s about unplugging from the fear. It’s realizing that the “Good Old Days” aren’t a time you can return to—they are a state of mind you have to protect, right here, right now. Joy doesn’t come from having the loudest voice. It comes when you realize you no longer need to shout to be whole.

A fictional story that clearly depicts the loss of family values. Choose face to face encounters with your loved ones before it is too late. Strive to know God’s plan for you. Read the Bible, and ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom and His understanding. Peace to all who have read this tale.

The prince of the airwaves is at work to kill and destroy our faith in God and the value our Lord Jesus placed on friends and family.  After Jesus walked out of the tomb, He quickly walked another 80 miles from the tomb to Galilee to find His broken friend Peter fishing. Why? To restore fellowship through His unmatched, undeserved forgiveness. Such is His Radical Grace!