The night was still. Silence wrapped around me like a heavy blanket, broken only by the faint hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the old clock on the wall. I sat alone in my chair, the weight of too many years and too many questions pressing on my chest. Again, a deep dark loneliness consumed me.
I whispered, though no one else was in the room.
“God… are You there?”
The air shifted. Not with thunder or lightning, not with visions of flaming angels, but with something quieter, deeper; the kind of presence that makes you realize you are not alone.
“I am here.”
The voice was not outside of me, not booming in the rafters. It was inside, gentle, warm and unshakable, as if the words were woven into the fabric of my being.
I closed my eyes. “I don’t even know where to begin. There’s so much I want to ask. About life. About my family. About me.”
God’s answer was patient, as if He had all eternity to wait.
“Then begin where your heart leads. I am listening.”
I thought of my childhood — the small Midwestern town, the crowded house with eight children, the way we lived both in chaos and in love. The coal furnace. Other extended family members living with us in our 900 square foot house.
“Why was it so hard?” I asked. My voice trembled. “We didn’t have much. Eating day old bread brought home from my Dad’s work, a lot of potatoes and cheap meals that filled us. I seamed to get into trouble often receiving punishment from my father. Was that You teaching me? Or was it just life?”
God replied softly.
“It was both. Life formed you, as rivers carve valleys. But I was there in the shaping. The laughter you shared with your brothers, the bond with your sister, the moments your mother’s eyes met yours with love. These were threads I wove into your story. Even the hardships, even the nights you lay awake wonder why you made bad decisions resulting in punishment. Making your Mom’s day worse. I noticed. I was nearer than you believed.”
Tears blurred my vision. “If You were near, why did I not hear You warn me? Why didn’t You step in to keep me from doing bad things?”
“Because love does not shield you from life. You had free will and chose the wrong path. My love works only when my children hear and obey. I gave you strength, resilience, curiosity, the hunger for meaning. I gave you family to wrestle with and to love. Every struggle planted something in you — a seed that would one day bear fruit.”
I shook my head. “But I don’t always see the fruit. Sometimes I just see the wounds.”
There was a pause, not of absence but of tenderness.
“Even scars are fruit, my child. They remind you of what you survived. They soften your heart toward others who carry pain. And they mark the places where I healed you, even if you didn’t recognize My hand at the time.”
I sat back, breathing slowly. For the first time in a long while, the silence didn’t feel empty. It felt full.
“Then let’s talk,” I said. “There are things I’ve carried for years. I want to know what You think of them.”
And God replied,
“Ask, and I will answer. Not always with explanations. Sometimes with presence. But always with truth.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, as if bracing myself.
“Then tell me about my family,” I said. “About my father. About my mother. About all of us crammed under one roof, always fighting, laughing, and struggling. Sometimes I wonder if I understood them at all.”
God’s voice was warm, steady, like sunlight through stained glass.
“Your family was not an accident. Each one of you was chosen to sharpen and soften one another. With his stern hand and unyielding lessons, your father gave you structure. Your mother, with her quiet strength, gave you tenderness. And your siblings, each in their own way, reflected different pieces of you.”
I swallowed hard. “My father… he was strict. Sometimes too strict. I still remember the sting of his discipline, the way he demanded perfection, or at least obedience. Then you took him from our world, leaving us without a provider. We lost our house. Mother with a tenth-grade education and no prospects to provide meant we had to move into a two-bedroom apartment in the ghetto. Why did it have to be that way?”
There was a pause. Then God spoke, not to excuse, but to reveal.
“Your father carried his own burdens, more than you saw. The weight of providing, the shadows of his past, the pressure to mold his children into something the world would respect. He did not always know how to love gently, but in his own way, he loved fiercely. Even when you feared him, he taught you resilience, responsibility, and endurance. His death required you, as the second oldest, to come of age sooner than most young men do. You learned to stand tall, to face life, because his discipline was the guiding light. He pressed you harder than you thought you could bear.”
My throat tightened. “But it hurt. Sometimes I felt he broke me more than he built me. The death brought out rage, rebellion and anger toward You and life. I no longer attended Sunday services. Trouble was always on the horizon for me.”
“Yes,” God answered, these events brought you both sorrow and truth. “And yet, brokenness is not the end of the story. Where your father’s discipline strengthened you, My grace filled the cracks. You did not remain shattered. You became whole in a different way. Not by avoiding pain, but by growing through it.”
I wiped at my eyes. “And my mother?”
A gentleness entered God’s voice.
“Your mother was the steady flame in the storm. She gave more of herself than she had to give. She stretched every dollar, every meal, every ounce of energy, to make sure her children knew care. You did not always see the weight she carried; the sleepless nights, the quiet tears, the unspoken prayers. But she was my reflection in your home. Through her, you learned compassion, sacrifice, and the strength of love that does not boast.”
I smiled faintly. “I remember her at the dinner table, ensuring everyone had enough, even when she didn’t take much herself. And her way of smoothing over Dad’s death.”
“Yes,” God said. “She was a bridge between your father’s death and your children’s laughter. She carried peace into the room when conflict threatened to break it. And even now, her lessons remain within you, echoing in your heart.”
I closed my eyes and thought of my siblings; the crowded bedrooms, the noisy mornings, the games and fights and secrets. Our bond grew from the ghetto life, banding together to survive.
“And what about us — the children? Eight of us, each so different. Sometimes it felt like a battlefield. Sometimes like a circus. Sometimes like heaven and hell rolled into one.”
God chuckled — yes, chuckled, as if even He saw the humor in the chaos.
“Families are laboratories of the soul. You learned patience because your brothers tested you. You learned loyalty because you stood together against the world. You learned forgiveness because, again and again, you hurt one another and had to choose to let go. Each child had a role: the responsible one, the free spirit, the observer, the dreamer, the only sister, the quiet achiever. And together, you formed something bigger than yourselves, a symphony of imperfect notes that somehow made music.”
“It didn’t always feel like music,” I muttered. “Sometimes it just felt like noise.”
God’s voice softened.
“Noise can become harmony when you look back. What was chaos in the moment becomes memory — and memory becomes meaning. Even the shouting, the rivalry, the competition — it was shaping you, teaching you to live not as an island, but as part of something larger. It prepared you for the world, where you would meet many people, each with their own rhythm, and learn to walk among them.”
I sat quietly, letting those words sink in. For the first time, I felt a strange gratitude for the noise, the chaos, the endless lessons. Maybe it hadn’t been wasted after all.
The silence between us grew heavier, like the air before a storm. I had skirted around the edges but wanted to step into the center. Into the questions I’d carried like stones in my chest for years.
“God,” I whispered, “why is there so much suffering? In the world, in families, in me? If You are love, why does it have to hurt so much?”
For a long moment, there was only stillness. Then God’s voice came, not rushed, not defensive, but steady.
“Because love does not erase Free Will. And where there is Free Will, there will be beauty and pain. To remove one would mean removing the other. I did not create you as puppets to dance without choice. I created you as beings who can choose to love, forgive, and grow. That Free Will allows joy. But it also allows wounds.”
I shook my head. “But it feels cruel sometimes. Children starve. Families fall apart. People lose those they love. And in my own life, the loss of a father, the disloyalty of my wife, that nearly destroyed me. The devastation of the children from divorce, the fear, the things I still carry. Were those necessary?”
“Not everything is necessary,” God said softly. “Some things are the cost of a broken world. People wound each other out of their own wounds. Pain begets pain. But even in what I do not will, I can still redeem. Nothing, not even suffering, is beyond My ability to weave into a greater story.”
My throat tightened. “Redeem? You mean make it worth something?”
“Yes. To bring light from darkness, strength from weakness, compassion from pain. Think of the times you sat with someone who was hurting. Your words carried weight because you had known sorrow. Your scars became bridges. What once broke you became the very thing that allowed you to reach another.”
I thought of the nights I had sat with friends, listening to their losses, knowing what grief tasted like myself. My pain had, somehow, made me gentler. But part of me still resisted.
“Then why didn’t you stop the worst of it? Not just in the world, but in me? Why didn’t you take away the anger, the mistakes, the regrets?”
God’s voice grew more intimate, like a hand on my shoulder.
“Because even mistakes can be teachers. Regret shows you what matters. Anger reveals where you have been wounded. Every shadow points to a hunger for light. And I was with you in all of it, not as a tyrant pulling strings, but as a companion whispering, ‘Keep going. This is not the end.’”
I swallowed hard, tears threatening again. “But forgiveness, that’s the hardest part. Forgiving others and forgiving myself. Sometimes I don’t know how. Sometimes I don’t even want to.”
“Forgiveness is not pretending nothing happened,” God replied. “It is setting down the chain that binds you to the hurt. It is choosing freedom over bitterness. And it is not something you create alone. It is something I breathe into you. When you cannot forgive, ask Me to forgive through you. When you cannot let go, place it in My hands until you are ready.”
“But what about forgiving myself?” I asked quietly. “That feels even harder.”
God’s answer was tender, yet firm.
“You see your failures as final. I see them as chapters, not the whole book. If I have forgiven you, why should you hold onto chains I have already broken? To forgive yourself is to agree with Me that you are more than your mistakes, that you are loved beyond your failures. To refuse forgiveness is to call yourself something less than what I made you to be.”
I sat there, trembling, feeling the weight of those words. All the years of self-blame, the replayed memories, the “if only” and “I should haves” and here was God saying, Let it go. I already have.
After a long pause, I found my voice again. “Then what is my purpose? If all of this: the childhood, the struggles, the scars, the lessons. If it wasn’t random, then what is it for?”
God’s voice deepened, like a current pulling me in.
“Your purpose is not a single task to accomplish, nor a title to achieve. It is to become fully alive in Me. To love and be loved. To carry the light I placed within you into every place you walk. Every act of kindness, every word of truth, every moment of listening These are purposes fulfilled. Do not think of purpose as a mountain peak you must climb. Think of it as a path you walk daily, where each step matters.”
I felt something loosen inside me. “So it’s not about success?”
“No,” God said, almost laughing. “Not as the world defines it. You measure success in numbers and accolades. I measure it in faithfulness and love. A quiet act of kindness weighs more in eternity than a thousand trophies. The moments you thought were small, helping your mother, encouraging a sibling, comforting a friend. They shine brighter than you realize.”
My chest ached, but this time it was not heaviness. It was release.
“Then all this time You’ve been here. Even when I doubted. Even when I failed. Even when I thought I was alone. Why did I not hear you?”
“Yes,” God whispered. “Always. You must submit your heart to me, truly willing to listen. Most of my children do not hear me because they are not open to my love.”
I bowed my head, not because I was told to, but because I could no longer sit tall under the weight of such love.
The room felt different now. The weight that had pressed on me at the start was lifting, like fog dissolving in morning sun. Yet I still had one more question, one I had carried quietly, almost afraid to voice.
“God… did I matter? In my family, in my life? Sometimes I wonder if I really made a difference, or if I was just another face in the crowd.”
The reply was immediate, rich with certainty.
“You mattered. Every moment you breathed, every choice you made, every step you walked. All of it mattered. You shaped your family more than you know. Your laughter stitched joy into the fabric of their days. Your struggles inspired courage in them, even if unspoken. The bonds you formed with your siblings, the care you gave your parents, the questions you asked of Me; these rippled outward in ways you could not see.”
I thought of my sister, struggling being the only female among all the brothers. I thought of my brothers, the alliances and rivalries that forged us into who we became. I thought of my parents, now gone, and the moments of pride in their eyes I hadn’t noticed enough.
“But I wasn’t perfect,” I whispered. “I fell short, again and again.”
“And yet,” God said gently, “I never asked you to be perfect. I asked you to be faithful. Even in your shortcomings, you grew. Even in your failures, you learned. And every time you turned back toward love, you fulfilled your purpose.”
Something inside me broke open. But not into sorrow. Into peace. The kind of peace that says, I don’t need to carry this alone anymore.
I leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, breathing deeply. “Then what do I do now? How do I carry this conversation into tomorrow?”
God’s answer was simple.
“Live awake. Live knowing you are loved. When you wake, thank Me for breath. When you eat, savor the gift. When you meet another, remember they, too, are Mine. Do not seek grand gestures. Seek presence. And when doubt returns — for it will — remember this night, this conversation. Remember: you are never alone.”
Tears slid down my face, but they felt like cleansing rain, not despair.
The clock ticked on. The hum of the refrigerator returned to my awareness. The world around me was the same, and yet everything inside me had changed.
I whispered one last time. “Thank You.”
And God replied,
“Always.”
The presence softened, not gone, but quieter, like a melody playing just beneath the surface of the ordinary. I opened my eyes, and for the first time in a long while, the silence didn’t feel empty.
I whispered, though no one else was in the room.
“God… are You there?”
The air shifted. Not with thunder or lightning, not with visions of flaming angels, but with something quieter, deeper; the kind of presence that makes you realize you are not alone.
“I am here.”
The voice was not outside of me, not booming in the rafters. It was inside, gentle, warm and unshakable, as if the words were woven into the fabric of my being.
I closed my eyes. “I don’t even know where to begin. There’s so much I want to ask. About life. About my family. About me.”
God’s answer was patient, as if He had all eternity to wait.
“Then begin where your heart leads. I am listening.”
I thought of my childhood — the small Midwestern town, the crowded house with eight children, the way we lived both in chaos and in love. The coal furnace. Other extended family members living with us in our 900 square foot house.
“Why was it so hard?” I asked. My voice trembled. “We didn’t have much. Eating day old bread brought home from my Dad’s work, a lot of potatoes and cheap meals that filled us. I seamed to get into trouble often receiving punishment from my father. Was that You teaching me? Or was it just life?”
God replied softly.
“It was both. Life formed you, as rivers carve valleys. But I was there in the shaping. The laughter you shared with your brothers, the bond with your sister, the moments your mother’s eyes met yours with love. These were threads I wove into your story. Even the hardships, even the nights you lay awake wonder why you made bad decisions resulting in punishment. Making your Mom’s day worse. I noticed. I was nearer than you believed.”
Tears blurred my vision. “If You were near, why did I not hear You warn me? Why didn’t You step in to keep me from doing bad things?”
“Because love does not shield you from life. You had free will and chose the wrong path. My love works only when my children hear and obey. I gave you strength, resilience, curiosity, the hunger for meaning. I gave you family to wrestle with and to love. Every struggle planted something in you — a seed that would one day bear fruit.”
I shook my head. “But I don’t always see the fruit. Sometimes I just see the wounds.”
There was a pause, not of absence but of tenderness.
“Even scars are fruit, my child. They remind you of what you survived. They soften your heart toward others who carry pain. And they mark the places where I healed you, even if you didn’t recognize My hand at the time.”
I sat back, breathing slowly. For the first time in a long while, the silence didn’t feel empty. It felt full.
“Then let’s talk,” I said. “There are things I’ve carried for years. I want to know what You think of them.”
And God replied,
“Ask, and I will answer. Not always with explanations. Sometimes with presence. But always with truth.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, as if bracing myself.
“Then tell me about my family,” I said. “About my father. About my mother. About all of us crammed under one roof, always fighting, laughing, and struggling. Sometimes I wonder if I understood them at all.”
God’s voice was warm, steady, like sunlight through stained glass.
“Your family was not an accident. Each one of you was chosen to sharpen and soften one another. With his stern hand and unyielding lessons, your father gave you structure. Your mother, with her quiet strength, gave you tenderness. And your siblings, each in their own way, reflected different pieces of you.”
I swallowed hard. “My father… he was strict. Sometimes too strict. I still remember the sting of his discipline, the way he demanded perfection, or at least obedience. Then you took him from our world, leaving us without a provider. We lost our house. Mother with a tenth-grade education and no prospects to provide meant we had to move into a two-bedroom apartment in the ghetto. Why did it have to be that way?”
There was a pause. Then God spoke, not to excuse, but to reveal.
“Your father carried his own burdens, more than you saw. The weight of providing, the shadows of his past, the pressure to mold his children into something the world would respect. He did not always know how to love gently, but in his own way, he loved fiercely. Even when you feared him, he taught you resilience, responsibility, and endurance. His death required you, as the second oldest, to come of age sooner than most young men do. You learned to stand tall, to face life, because his discipline was the guiding light. He pressed you harder than you thought you could bear.”
My throat tightened. “But it hurt. Sometimes I felt he broke me more than he built me. The death brought out rage, rebellion and anger toward You and life. I no longer attended Sunday services. Trouble was always on the horizon for me.”
“Yes,” God answered, these events brought you both sorrow and truth. “And yet, brokenness is not the end of the story. Where your father’s discipline strengthened you, My grace filled the cracks. You did not remain shattered. You became whole in a different way. Not by avoiding pain, but by growing through it.”
I wiped at my eyes. “And my mother?”
A gentleness entered God’s voice.
“Your mother was the steady flame in the storm. She gave more of herself than she had to give. She stretched every dollar, every meal, every ounce of energy, to make sure her children knew care. You did not always see the weight she carried; the sleepless nights, the quiet tears, the unspoken prayers. But she was my reflection in your home. Through her, you learned compassion, sacrifice, and the strength of love that does not boast.”
I smiled faintly. “I remember her at the dinner table, ensuring everyone had enough, even when she didn’t take much herself. And her way of smoothing over Dad’s death.”
“Yes,” God said. “She was a bridge between your father’s death and your children’s laughter. She carried peace into the room when conflict threatened to break it. And even now, her lessons remain within you, echoing in your heart.”
I closed my eyes and thought of my siblings; the crowded bedrooms, the noisy mornings, the games and fights and secrets. Our bond grew from the ghetto life, banding together to survive.
“And what about us — the children? Eight of us, each so different. Sometimes it felt like a battlefield. Sometimes like a circus. Sometimes like heaven and hell rolled into one.”
God chuckled — yes, chuckled, as if even He saw the humor in the chaos.
“Families are laboratories of the soul. You learned patience because your brothers tested you. You learned loyalty because you stood together against the world. You learned forgiveness because, again and again, you hurt one another and had to choose to let go. Each child had a role: the responsible one, the free spirit, the observer, the dreamer, the only sister, the quiet achiever. And together, you formed something bigger than yourselves, a symphony of imperfect notes that somehow made music.”
“It didn’t always feel like music,” I muttered. “Sometimes it just felt like noise.”
God’s voice softened.
“Noise can become harmony when you look back. What was chaos in the moment becomes memory — and memory becomes meaning. Even the shouting, the rivalry, the competition — it was shaping you, teaching you to live not as an island, but as part of something larger. It prepared you for the world, where you would meet many people, each with their own rhythm, and learn to walk among them.”
I sat quietly, letting those words sink in. For the first time, I felt a strange gratitude for the noise, the chaos, the endless lessons. Maybe it hadn’t been wasted after all.
The silence between us grew heavier, like the air before a storm. I had skirted around the edges but wanted to step into the center. Into the questions I’d carried like stones in my chest for years.
“God,” I whispered, “why is there so much suffering? In the world, in families, in me? If You are love, why does it have to hurt so much?”
For a long moment, there was only stillness. Then God’s voice came, not rushed, not defensive, but steady.
“Because love does not erase Free Will. And where there is Free Will, there will be beauty and pain. To remove one would mean removing the other. I did not create you as puppets to dance without choice. I created you as beings who can choose to love, forgive, and grow. That Free Will allows joy. But it also allows wounds.”
I shook my head. “But it feels cruel sometimes. Children starve. Families fall apart. People lose those they love. And in my own life, the loss of a father, the disloyalty of my wife, that nearly destroyed me. The devastation of the children from divorce, the fear, the things I still carry. Were those necessary?”
“Not everything is necessary,” God said softly. “Some things are the cost of a broken world. People wound each other out of their own wounds. Pain begets pain. But even in what I do not will, I can still redeem. Nothing, not even suffering, is beyond My ability to weave into a greater story.”
My throat tightened. “Redeem? You mean make it worth something?”
“Yes. To bring light from darkness, strength from weakness, compassion from pain. Think of the times you sat with someone who was hurting. Your words carried weight because you had known sorrow. Your scars became bridges. What once broke you became the very thing that allowed you to reach another.”
I thought of the nights I had sat with friends, listening to their losses, knowing what grief tasted like myself. My pain had, somehow, made me gentler. But part of me still resisted.
“Then why didn’t you stop the worst of it? Not just in the world, but in me? Why didn’t you take away the anger, the mistakes, the regrets?”
God’s voice grew more intimate, like a hand on my shoulder.
“Because even mistakes can be teachers. Regret shows you what matters. Anger reveals where you have been wounded. Every shadow points to a hunger for light. And I was with you in all of it, not as a tyrant pulling strings, but as a companion whispering, ‘Keep going. This is not the end.’”
I swallowed hard, tears threatening again. “But forgiveness, that’s the hardest part. Forgiving others and forgiving myself. Sometimes I don’t know how. Sometimes I don’t even want to.”
“Forgiveness is not pretending nothing happened,” God replied. “It is setting down the chain that binds you to the hurt. It is choosing freedom over bitterness. And it is not something you create alone. It is something I breathe into you. When you cannot forgive, ask Me to forgive through you. When you cannot let go, place it in My hands until you are ready.”
“But what about forgiving myself?” I asked quietly. “That feels even harder.”
God’s answer was tender, yet firm.
“You see your failures as final. I see them as chapters, not the whole book. If I have forgiven you, why should you hold onto chains I have already broken? To forgive yourself is to agree with Me that you are more than your mistakes, that you are loved beyond your failures. To refuse forgiveness is to call yourself something less than what I made you to be.”
I sat there, trembling, feeling the weight of those words. All the years of self-blame, the replayed memories, the “if only” and “I should haves” and here was God saying, Let it go. I already have.
After a long pause, I found my voice again. “Then what is my purpose? If all of this: the childhood, the struggles, the scars, the lessons. If it wasn’t random, then what is it for?”
God’s voice deepened, like a current pulling me in.
“Your purpose is not a single task to accomplish, nor a title to achieve. It is to become fully alive in Me. To love and be loved. To carry the light I placed within you into every place you walk. Every act of kindness, every word of truth, every moment of listening These are purposes fulfilled. Do not think of purpose as a mountain peak you must climb. Think of it as a path you walk daily, where each step matters.”
I felt something loosen inside me. “So it’s not about success?”
“No,” God said, almost laughing. “Not as the world defines it. You measure success in numbers and accolades. I measure it in faithfulness and love. A quiet act of kindness weighs more in eternity than a thousand trophies. The moments you thought were small, helping your mother, encouraging a sibling, comforting a friend. They shine brighter than you realize.”
My chest ached, but this time it was not heaviness. It was release.
“Then all this time You’ve been here. Even when I doubted. Even when I failed. Even when I thought I was alone. Why did I not hear you?”
“Yes,” God whispered. “Always. You must submit your heart to me, truly willing to listen. Most of my children do not hear me because they are not open to my love.”
I bowed my head, not because I was told to, but because I could no longer sit tall under the weight of such love.
The room felt different now. The weight that had pressed on me at the start was lifting, like fog dissolving in morning sun. Yet I still had one more question, one I had carried quietly, almost afraid to voice.
“God… did I matter? In my family, in my life? Sometimes I wonder if I really made a difference, or if I was just another face in the crowd.”
The reply was immediate, rich with certainty.
“You mattered. Every moment you breathed, every choice you made, every step you walked. All of it mattered. You shaped your family more than you know. Your laughter stitched joy into the fabric of their days. Your struggles inspired courage in them, even if unspoken. The bonds you formed with your siblings, the care you gave your parents, the questions you asked of Me; these rippled outward in ways you could not see.”
I thought of my sister, struggling being the only female among all the brothers. I thought of my brothers, the alliances and rivalries that forged us into who we became. I thought of my parents, now gone, and the moments of pride in their eyes I hadn’t noticed enough.
“But I wasn’t perfect,” I whispered. “I fell short, again and again.”
“And yet,” God said gently, “I never asked you to be perfect. I asked you to be faithful. Even in your shortcomings, you grew. Even in your failures, you learned. And every time you turned back toward love, you fulfilled your purpose.”
Something inside me broke open. But not into sorrow. Into peace. The kind of peace that says, I don’t need to carry this alone anymore.
I leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, breathing deeply. “Then what do I do now? How do I carry this conversation into tomorrow?”
God’s answer was simple.
“Live awake. Live knowing you are loved. When you wake, thank Me for breath. When you eat, savor the gift. When you meet another, remember they, too, are Mine. Do not seek grand gestures. Seek presence. And when doubt returns — for it will — remember this night, this conversation. Remember: you are never alone.”
Tears slid down my face, but they felt like cleansing rain, not despair.
The clock ticked on. The hum of the refrigerator returned to my awareness. The world around me was the same, and yet everything inside me had changed.
I whispered one last time. “Thank You.”
And God replied,
“Always.”
The presence softened, not gone, but quieter, like a melody playing just beneath the surface of the ordinary. I opened my eyes, and for the first time in a long while, the silence didn’t feel empty.
I'll have to finish it later. One thing, though. I didn't understand this sentence...
