The Practice Was Just the Door. What’s Inside Will Undo You.

I’ve been noticing it.

The practices—the old ones, the quiet ones—
they’re showing up again.

Silence. Stillness. Journaling. Prayer.
People are talking about them more—
in books, podcasts, Instagram captions.

Like maybe the noise finally got too loud.
Like maybe burnout caught up to all of us.
Like maybe we’re all a little tired of shouting to be heard,
and craving something that holds instead of hurries.

I don’t say that with cynicism.
Just recognition.
It’s happening.
Something in the collective is reaching back toward rhythm,
toward grounding,
toward whatever it is that steadies us when belief starts to fray
and performance stops working.

For me, the practices were never a trend.
They were survival.
I didn’t choose them to be impressive.
I reached for them because I didn’t know how else to hold what was breaking.

I was nineteen when they found me.
Now I’m fifty-three.
They’ve taken different shapes through the years, but they’ve always been with me.

And if I’m honest—
they’re not the whole thing.
But they’ve kept me from falling apart more times than I can count.
They’ve given me something to return to
when church didn’t make sense,
when God felt far,
when I couldn’t tell what I believed anymore.

They don’t fix everything.
They’re not a formula.
But they are a place to begin again.

There’s a lot of talk right now about what the practices are.
You can list them if you want.

Silence. Journaling. Rest. Breath prayer.
Worship. Service. Fasting. Simplicity. Study.
They go by many names.

But for me, they were never about getting them right.
They were about having somewhere to go when I wasn’t sure where I was anymore.
They were how I stayed close to God when everything else felt tangled.
Not as a ladder.
Not as a checklist.
Just as something steady underfoot.

If you’ve known me a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about them.
Not because I think they’re magic.
But because they’ve been a kind of ground for me—
holding me when the rest was shifting.

They’ve helped me stay rooted enough
to be no more than I am, and no less.
To live without needing to perform belief.
To find quiet when everything else was loud.
To pray when I didn’t have words.

But I’ve also learned this—
The practices aren’t the whole journey.
They’re the doorway.

In the early hours of the day,
when I sit in the quiet,
what I find is rarely flashy.
Sometimes it’s sorrow that rises.
Sometimes regret.
Other times—joy, or some small flicker of light I didn’t expect.
But mostly, it’s just me.
And God.
And whatever is true in that moment.

Last night, just before I fell asleep,
I realized that the practices I’ve returned to again and again—
silence, journaling, breath prayer, rest—
have slowly opened the way to other kinds of formation.
The kind no one really talks about.
The ones that don’t look like practices at all—until you’re in them.

It wasn’t just silence anymore.
It became: be mindful of needless words.
Don’t join in mockery just because it’s dressed up like humor.
Even the snarky memes. Especially the snarky memes.

It wasn’t just journaling.
It became: rid yourself of the pointing finger.
Write, yes—but don’t use your pen to accuse.

It wasn’t just service.
It became: only do what you see God doing.
Don’t build golden calves just because they’re shiny.
Don’t build Babel just because you’re good at stacking bricks.

It wasn’t just fasting.
It became: stop looking at the speck in someone else’s eye.
Start with the log in your own.

The practices became the entry point.
And from there, they led me into other places—
quieter, harder, more honest places.
Where formation didn’t come in big sweeping moments,
but in the slow work of being reshaped.
Inside-out.

There weren’t instructions.
No tidy “how to.”
Just one small step at a time.
And then another.

Somewhere in that unfolding,
the silence started to grow a kind of weight to it—
a solidness inside me.
Not rigidity.
Just strength.
Just presence.

Capacity deepened.
Compassion cracked open.

I found myself praying—again and again—
Forgive me. I didn’t know what I was doing.
And quietly, that ancient prayer that got overlooked when it was trendy
started to surface in me again—
that I might not cause harm.

That one stayed.
That one asked something of me.

Because the more I listened,
the more I saw where I’d been complicit.
Where I’d turned a blind eye.
Where I’d wanted to be right more than I wanted to be whole.

And all of it, all of it, came back to this:

To be no more than I am.
To be no less.
To let the practices lead me—not as a performance,
but as a way of being in the world
that is quieter, truer, slower, more real.

So I keep returning.
Not to check a box.
Not to earn something.
But because they lead me—
as one of my favorite books says—
“further up and further in.”