Silence

At nearly 40 years old, I have lived enough stories to fill several lives.

Statistically speaking, my life may be around 50 percent over.

That is a slightly aggressive way to start a Field Note.

But it also means—God willing—I may still have another 40 years of experiences, assignments, victories, failures, corrections, and crazy-ass stories coming my way.

Lately, I have felt compelled to do something my football coaches taught me a long time ago:

Review the game tape.

Not to live in the past.

Not to regret every missed block, bad read, broken relationship, lost opportunity, or decision made at full speed.

To learn.

To see what was actually there.

To find the patterns that were invisible while I was standing inside them.

When I review the game tape of my life—the businesses, the blessings, the attacks, the drinking, the marriage, the darkness, the breakthroughs, and the nights spent trying to solve everything myself—I keep seeing the same pattern.

Every season contained silence.

But the silence did not always produce the same thing.

In the healthy seasons, I entered the quiet and invited God to meet me there.

That was solitude.

In the destructive seasons, I disappeared into the quiet, shut out God and everyone who loved me, and listened to my own fear until it sounded like truth.

That was isolation.

The difference was not whether I was alone.

The difference was who I brought into the silence.

Football Was Life

From second grade on, football was life.

Actually, sports were life.

Growing up on a ranch meant there was always work waiting.

It did not matter whether it was 30 degrees below zero or 100 degrees outside. Animals still needed feed. Fence still needed repair. Chores still needed to be completed. Something always needed to be carried, cleaned, fixed, moved, or kept alive.

If we were not at school, we were working.

Then my parents put us in sports.

Looking back, that was one of the decisions that shaped the person I became.

From second grade through college, I wrestled competitively. From fifth grade until two years into college, I played football.

There were a few middle-school years when basketball season did not overlap with wrestling, so I played basketball too. Mostly, we used it to stay in shape for wrestling.

One day I will tell you about wrestle-ball.

It is every bit as great and violent as you are imagining right now.

When spring arrived, I ran track to get faster for football.

At first, sports were a loophole.

If I filled my schedule with practices, meets, games, tournaments, and lifting, I could “play” with my friends for another 20 hours each week instead of spending those hours doing chores.

That sounds strategic because it was.

There was only one problem.

I did not know how to just play.

As previous Field Notes have probably made clear, I do not like entering anything unless I believe there is a way to win it.

I am slightly competitive.

Danielle and everyone who has ever played anything with me may define “slightly” differently.

But that competitive standard spread to the people around us. Even in a small, remote Wyoming town, we expected to compete like a powerhouse.

My senior football season tested that identity.

The Wrong Finish Line

I truly believe we were physically overmatched by most of the teams we faced that year.

We did not have the biggest players.

We did not have the strongest players.

We did not always have the fastest players.

What we did have was one team with one mindset and one goal.

We were willing to do whatever it took to make it to state.

Looking back, that goal may explain both why we succeeded and why we lost.

We set the finish line in the wrong place.

Our goal was to make it to the state championship.

Not to win the state championship.

When championship week arrived, you could feel something shift.

The hunger changed.

The urgency pulled back.

The team had already reached the line we had spent the season staring at.

In my opinion, we played our real state championship the week before. We spent the season trying to arrive, and once we arrived, some part of us believed the assignment had already been completed.

Then we got our asses kicked.

That lesson deserves its own Field Note:

Be careful where you place the finish line.

But the road to that game taught me something just as important.

Our season began 0–2.

After two losses, the odds of winning out and reaching state did not look good.

We could have kept doing what we had always done and hoped the results changed.

Instead, in week three, we scrapped decades of data, habits, and playbooks.

We built a new offense in a single week.

A New Offense Before Friday

We abandoned the traditional I-formation and installed a double-wing offense built around misdirection.

We ran the ball approximately 99 percent of the time.

We nearly eliminated the wide-receiver position.

It was a snub-nosed, hit-you-in-the-mouth style of football.

Nothing polished.

Nothing cute.

Move together.

Hide the ball.

Find the gap.

Hit it hard.

We had less than a week to rebuild the way our offense thought and moved.

So we returned to two-a-days.

We practiced around six in the morning, sometimes working through the system in the parking lot.

Then we went to school all day.

Then we practiced again that afternoon.

After practice, we spent another hour watching film—our walkthroughs, our previous games, or the team waiting for us on Friday.

Before I knew what people called the seven Ps—proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance—I discovered the principle in a dark weight room.

Preparation could close a gap that talent alone could not.

If we studied our opponents harder than they studied us, we could walk onto the field knowing what they were about to do.

If we studied ourselves honestly, we could correct a weakness before the other team exploited it.

I truly believe we watched more game film during my senior year than we had watched throughout all my previous high-school seasons combined.

Maybe more than I watched during some of my college years.

We learned ourselves.

We learned the teams we were facing.

In some cases, we probably understood their playbook better than they did.

The Dark Weight Room

The film room was not impressive.

We gathered in a damp, dark weight room where a projector had been set up.

The room smelled like sweat, rubber mats, old metal, and whatever moisture had been trapped there since the building was constructed.

We would shut ourselves inside.

Then, before a coach corrected anyone and before a player defended himself, we watched.

In silence.

Nobody explained the bad angle.

Nobody blamed the missed assignment on somebody else.

Nobody claimed the camera misunderstood what happened.

We watched the play.

Then we watched it again.

The film did not care about our intentions.

It showed where our feet went.

It showed who moved too early.

It showed who stopped before the whistle.

It showed the hole we missed, the fake we believed, the tackle we failed to finish, and the teammate we left alone.

The film told the truth before anybody in the room was allowed to create a better story.

That silence was not empty.

It was preparation.

We were alone with the evidence, but we were not isolated.

We were together.

We had coaches.

We had a shared goal.

We were willing to see the truth because Friday was coming.

That room taught us how to turn silence into correction.

From week three until the championship, we barely got touched.

Our defense swarmed because it was rare for us not to know where the ball was going.

Our offense ran through people because 11 players understood where they were going and trusted one another enough to move as one.

We went from being smoked to smoking people.

From worst to first.

Not because the film made us bigger.

Because the film made us honest.

Reviewing 40 Years of Film

Today, I am back in the film room.

The screen is larger now.

The season is longer.

The stakes are much higher.

I am reviewing nearly 40 years of life, more than 13 years of marriage, every business I can remember building, every blessing I nearly mishandled, every attack I survived, every relationship I strengthened or burned, every decision I forced, and every direction I ignored.

The good.

The bad.

The ugly.

When I look at the cycles honestly, I see a correlation I could not see while I was living them.

My healthiest seasons contained solitude.

My worst downward spirals contained isolation.

Both often happened at night.

Both could happen in a dark room.

Both could look like one man sitting alone.

From the outside, they might have appeared identical.

They produced completely different fruit.

In solitude, I brought God into the room.

I prayed.

I listened.

I allowed truth to interrupt the story I wanted to tell myself.

I emerged with greater clarity, more peace, and a willingness to return to my family, my team, and the assignment in front of me.

In isolation, I became the coach, quarterback, referee, opponent, and replay official.

I studied only the angles that supported what I already felt.

I heard every voice through fear.

I called spinning my thoughts “problem-solving.”

I called shutting people out “focus.”

I called refusing help “strength.”

I called taking control “leadership.”

And sometimes I called isolation solitude because that sounded more spiritual.

Silence in the Basement

Some of my darkest nights were silent.

There were nights I sat drinking alone in the basement.

No crowd.

No party.

No visible chaos.

Just me, the alcohol, the darkness, and whatever pain I was trying not to name.

I could have told you I needed space.

I could have said I was decompressing.

I could have claimed I was protecting everyone else from my mood.

But I was not resting with God.

I was hiding.

There were other nights when the bottle was replaced by a keyboard.

I would type for hours, trying to fight a battle by myself.

One more email.

One more plan.

One more system.

One more attempt to outwork the uncertainty.

I would say:

“God is not answering, and I need a decision now. I am just going to do it myself.”

That sentence never led anywhere good.

It may have produced motion.

It may have created a document, a deal, a response, or the illusion of control.

But motion is not the same as direction.

Isolation made every problem sound urgent and every thought sound authoritative.

There was nobody in the film room to say:

Pause it.

Back it up.

Watch what actually happened.

You are reacting to the wrong player.

You are running the old offense.

You placed the finish line in the wrong place.

You do not need to decide tonight.

The Sound of Silence

Paul Simon wrote “The Sound of Silence” as a young man, yet the song captured something our hyperconnected world still has not solved.

People can exchange words without sharing truth.

They can receive sound without really listening.

They can stand in a crowd and remain completely unknown.

Noise is not connection.

Silence is not automatically peace.

That is the tension inside the song.

The silence grows because people do not truly reach one another. They speak past each other, worship what shines, ignore the warnings around them, and remain alone together.

That is isolation in a crowd.

Biblical solitude moves in the opposite direction.

It is not the absence of people for the sake of escape.

It is chosen space where false voices become quiet enough for truth to be heard.

Solitude remains connected to God.

It restores connection to yourself.

And eventually, it prepares you to return and love other people better.

Isolation says:

Leave me alone.

Solitude says:

God, meet me here.

Isolation closes the door because it is afraid of what will enter.

Solitude closes the door because it wants to hear the One already present.

Isolation rehearses injury.

Solitude receives instruction.

Isolation returns you to the world more suspicious, depleted, and defended.

Solitude returns you more honest, rested, and ready to serve.

The room may be the same.

The silence may sound the same.

The posture is completely different.

Elijah in the Cave

Elijah knew both isolation and solitude.

In 1 Kings 18, he stood on Mount Carmel and witnessed one of the most dramatic public victories in Scripture.

Fire fell.

God answered.

The false prophets were defeated.

Then, almost immediately, Elijah received a death threat from Jezebel and ran.

That part matters.

A person can move from public victory to private collapse faster than anyone watching from the outside understands.

Elijah was afraid.

He fled into the wilderness.

He sat beneath a broom tree and asked God to let him die.

God's first response was not a lecture.

It was care.

Sleep.

Bread.

Water.

Then more rest and more food.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing a collapsing person can do is sleep, eat, tell the truth, and allow somebody to care for him.

Elijah eventually traveled to Horeb and entered a cave.

God asked him:

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Elijah answered from the film running inside his mind.

He had been faithful.

Everyone else had abandoned the covenant.

The altars had been destroyed.

The prophets had been killed.

He alone was left, and now they wanted him dead too.

Some of that report was true.

It was not the whole truth.

Isolation had narrowed Elijah's view until he could see only himself and the threat.

God told him to stand on the mountain.

A powerful wind tore through the rocks.

Then came an earthquake.

Then fire.

But the Lord was not in the spectacle.

After the fire came what the NIV calls a gentle whisper and other translations describe as the sound of sheer silence.

Elijah covered his face and stepped to the mouth of the cave.

God had turned the hiding place into a meeting place.

The cave did not become holy because caves are holy.

It became holy because Elijah was no longer alone with his fear.

God was in the silence.

God Did Not Leave Him There

The story does not end with Elijah sitting peacefully in the cave.

That is important too.

God spoke.

Then God gave him direction.

Elijah had people to anoint.

He had a successor to call.

He had an assignment to reenter.

God also corrected the lie that Elijah was completely alone. There were still thousands who had not bowed to Baal.

The silence restored perspective.

The solitude returned him to purpose.

And the assignment returned him to people.

Real solitude has a door back out.

Isolation locks from the inside and hides the key.

Solitude may last an hour, a day, a weekend, or a season. But if the quiet continually makes you less willing to tell the truth, receive counsel, love your family, join community, or obey God, you may not be experiencing solitude anymore.

You may be hiding.

Solitude is not measured only by how peaceful the room feels.

It is measured by the fruit you carry out of it.

Did you hear truth?

Did you become more honest?

Did you receive direction?

Did you become ready to love?

Did the quiet return you to your assignment?

Or did you simply become more convinced that nobody understands you and you must handle everything alone?

The Film Does Not Condemn You

Reviewing the game tape of your life can sound like an invitation to regret.

It is not.

I do not sit here wishing I could erase every decision I made.

I have very little interest in staring backward and fantasizing about a life that never happened.

I want to learn and move into the next game.

The next situation.

The next battle.

The next assignment.

New knowledge.

New insight.

New focus.

God has used even my worst moments to produce growth, warning, testimony, and preparation.

That does not make the damage good.

It means He refuses to waste the film.

The purpose of watching tape is not to prove you are a terrible player.

It is to prepare you for the next play.

Condemnation says:

Look what you did. You should never take the field again.

Conviction says:

Look honestly. Learn the lesson. Change the formation. Run the next play differently.

Isolation watches the worst plays on repeat and calls it analysis.

Solitude invites God into the film room and asks:

What is true?

What did I miss?

What needs to change?

What are You asking me to do next?

Then it listens.

Silence Is an Amplifier

Silence is not automatically good or bad.

Silence is an amplifier.

What you carry into it often becomes louder.

Bring untreated shame into silence, refuse every other voice, and shame can begin sounding like identity.

Bring anger into silence, replay the offense, and anger can begin sounding like justice.

Bring fear into silence, reject counsel, and fear can begin sounding like discernment.

Bring pride into silence, and control can begin sounding like leadership.

But bring your honest heart before God, open His Word, remain willing to be corrected, and silence can become holy ground.

The same darkness that once hid a basement can become the stillness where a prayer begins.

The same keyboard once used to force an outcome can become the place where a testimony is recorded.

The same cave used to escape an assignment can become the place where God gives it back.

The difference is not silence.

The difference is presence, posture, and purpose.

Isolation

• Is driven by fear, shame, pride, hurt, or exhaustion.

• Cuts off God, trusted people, or both.

• Replays thoughts without allowing truth to challenge them.

• Hides instead of resting.

• Leaves you emptier, colder, and less willing to return.

Solitude

• Is entered intentionally rather than used as disappearance.

• Remains connected to God and open to truth.

• Creates space for prayer, listening, rest, and correction.

• Produces clearer direction rather than frantic motion.

• Prepares you to return to people and love them well.

Solitude does not guarantee that the next outcome will feel positive.

God may use the quiet to ask you to apologize, wait, surrender control, change direction, end something unhealthy, or walk into a difficult assignment.

The fruit is not always comfort.

The fruit is connection and obedience.

Invite God Into the Film Room

As I game-plan the next year, five years, and 20 years, I know there will be more silence.

There will be early mornings.

There will be late nights.

There will be decisions nobody else can make for me.

There will be moments when I need to step away from the noise and review the tape.

In each one, I will have a choice.

Isolation or solitude.

Hide or listen.

Replay the fear or invite the truth.

Fight alone or ask God for the next direction.

I know what happens when I say:

“God is not answering fast enough, so I will decide without Him.”

I have that film.

I have watched it.

I do not need to run the same play again.

The next time I enter the silence, I want God in the room.

I want my defenses down.

I want to remain connected to Danielle and to trusted people who can tell me when my version of the play is incomplete.

I want to leave the room with the next faithful step—not merely a stronger argument for what I had already decided.

This is where the D.A.N.G.E.R. Field Note Method becomes practical:

Drop the Mask. Stop calling isolation focus, strength, or spiritual solitude.

Admit What Is True. Name what the film actually shows without defending it.

Name What God Has Made Clear. Listen for the instruction beneath the noise.

Go Before Fear Leaves. Reenter the relationship, conversation, community, or assignment.

Endure the Dangerous Middle. Do not run back to isolation just because obedience feels uncomfortable.

Record and Release the Testimony. Preserve the lesson so someone else does not have to repeat the same play.

Tell the truth.

Name the next faithful step.

Move before fear leaves.

Sometimes moving means advancing.

Sometimes it means returning.

Sometimes it means stepping out of the cave.

The world already contains enough people making noise without communicating.

It does not need one more loud Christian who never listens.

It needs people who know how to become quiet without disappearing.

People who can enter solitude without abandoning community.

People who can hear correction without collapsing into condemnation.

People who can sit in the film room long enough for God to reveal what is true—and then take the field again.

The difference between isolation and solitude is not whether you are alone.

It is who you bring into the silence.

Isolation says:

I have to handle this myself.

Solitude prays:

God, show me what is true and tell me what to do next.

Then solitude listens.

And when God speaks, solitude leaves the cave.

Scripture to Carry

“After the fire came a gentle whisper.” — 1 Kings 19:12

“What are you doing here, Elijah?” — 1 Kings 19:13

“He went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” — Mark 1:35

“Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.” — Proverbs 18:1 ESV

Questions for the Field

1. When you step away from people, are you resting with God or hiding from truth?

2. What does the game tape of your healthiest seasons reveal about connection, prayer, and solitude?

3. What repeated thought becomes louder when you isolate—and who have you allowed to challenge it?

4. What have you been calling focus, strength, or peace that may actually be fear-driven isolation?

5. What instruction has God already made clear that requires you to leave the cave and reenter the assignment?

A Short Prayer

Father, meet me in the silence. Expose every place where I have called hiding solitude, control leadership, or frantic motion obedience. Give me courage to review the film without condemnation, humility to receive correction, and patience to hear Your gentle voice. Restore my connection to You, to the people You have given me, and to the assignment in front of me. Show me the next faithful step, and help me leave the cave when You say it is time. In Jesus' name, amen.

Listen

“The Sound of Silence” — Simon & Garfunkel
Theme: Noise can surround us while real communication disappears. Let the song expose the difference between a crowded life without connection and biblical solitude that makes room to hear God and return to people with truth.

A Necessary Note

Isolation is not always a deliberate spiritual choice. Depression, trauma, anxiety, grief, exhaustion, and other health conditions can make connection feel impossible. If isolation is accompanied by thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or believing others would be better without you, tell someone immediately and seek urgent professional or emergency help. Do not remain alone with a crisis.