Camp Out

We went camping the other night. Rather, we slept outside on our screened-in back porch. We set up the kids’ cots and sleeping bags. I took the sofa with a pillow. And in the most camping-cheating aspect, we turned on the overhead fans. But we slept outside. We fell asleep to the crickets and cicadas, and we woke to the chirping of the birds.

Some days, I feel like my ears are going to explode from a lack of silence. Days are a constant barrage of listening to spotify, podcasts, tv, kids demands, kids fighting, kids laughing, and even blaring sound machines at night. As I write this, I have a NASCAR race in my left ear, a Spidey(?!) show in my right ear, and in, what appears to be a third ear, an x-box Madden game.

After late-night popsicles and a book, I finally got the kids to be quiet. I may have practically had to cover one child’s mouth with my hand, sit on another kid, and threaten all the threats, but finally, we were going to fall asleep in the peace and quiet of nature. But damn if the crickets and the cicadas weren’t ready to party. Someone must have spiked that dew grass because they were lit and did.not.stop. Only to be rivaled by knocked over water bottles and what sounded like American Airlines having a fly-off between its fleet. And a few short hours later, it was the bird’s turn. Chirping to each other like their lives depended on who could chirp the longest. Some were singing such sweet, sweet ballads. One or two were tweet tweet tweet/bitching having woken up on the wrong side of the nest, but overall, if you didn’t mind losing sleep, it was the most beautiful song.

And then it hit me– we are all God’s creation. We are all sharing this same earth. We can’t escape each other’s noise. There is a time for everything under the sun, and the time for peace and quiet is not now. It is my time to find God in the chaos. Our house is full of beautiful laughs and constant bickering and too-loud devices and silly songs and “he-hit-mes” and “i’m-telling-moms” and “i-hate-yous” and “i-love-yous”. And, I cannot make this shit up– but as I write this (shows time has ended), my oldest son has found a legit microphone and is screaming “I DEMAND SILENCE” while my husband is actually pleading with him to be silent while he is wearing his noise-cancelling headphones for work. And it’s a constant battle of microphones and noise-cancelling headphones. And being lulled to sleep by cicadas mating and partying and woken to birds’ lullabies. My house is loud. The world is loud. Creation is loud. But God is still here, and He is Loud too if we listen, and it is up to me to find Him in the everyday loud moments.

So that morning, when the birds started their dawn songs, and I wanted to keep my kids asleep, I said screw it and I plugged in my sound machine on the porch. And I let the white noise and the birds battle it out for being the loudest—but I heard God loud and clear too with the sunrise and my kids asleep in front of me, and I thanked Him for all the beautiful, loud sounds of my life.