Stop Filling Up All the Empty Space in Your Life
By: Mary Gallagher
Tags: Creativity, Writing Tips, Intentional Living, Self-awareness, Life Lessons

“Grace fills empty spaces.” -Simone Weil

I’ve been on a road trip with my son and his girlfriend. It’s been amazing and I’m glad I have a relationship with a young adult son who wants to spend double-digit hours in a car with his mom. Like all good vacations, it’s been filled with car music and reminiscing conversations, packed with things to do — this trip complete with an evening concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.

Several bucket list items have been checked off and I am enjoying the foray from the beaten path. I’ve been overdue for some inspiration and a much needed time away from my daily routine. There is one part of my routine, however, that I miss and need daily.

It’s my quiet time.

I live in a season in my life where I have the luxury of extended periods of time and quiet — a luxury I never had working full time or caring for young children. I work for myself so I choose the times I want to interact and guard the times I set aside to be isolated and alone.

On a typical day, I spend at least half of it in silence other than the tapping on my keyboard as I write like I am now or the barking beagle who spots a barn cat where she shouldn’t be. I do not turn on the television, radio, news shows, or background music.

I need silence because I need to listen.

Silence provides the gaps in life and the stillness my mind craves.

The spaces matter too

When I am bombarded with constant input my head feels full and stuffed from ear to ear. Thoughts are not my own (and certainly not my muse’s) and my thinking is muddled. The act of receiving good words to write is not about seeking them but listening to them.

I listen, I pay attention to a sentence that shoots fully formed into my mind, I take it down and then listen for where it wants to go next. It’s margin. it’s empty space.

It’s white space, whatever you want to call it, but what I’ve found is that grace fills those empty spaces.

I have no editorial calendar. I have ideas and story starters, but in between the ideas and a finished written product that connects with readers is a vast open space that only grace can fill.

When you think about it, grace is the filler for all we lack. It fills when relationships sustain hurt and a gap is created. Invited, grace can bridge the folded arms and hurt hearts and bring us back to each other. Grace fills the space between the love of a child and parent where words are difficult and perspectives are so polarized they seem almost insurmountable. Grace tethers us without words. It keeps us from floating away from each other.

But grace requires space in which to manifest itself. It’s a lot like letting go. When we refuse to figure out our next step, it is revealed to us.

I once heard a preacher explain theological grace as what fills the gap between God’s ideal for mankind (love without judgment, forgive without measure, and give without reluctance) and our feeble attempts to be like Him.

Wherever you fall short, grace fills the gap — no matter how wide or deep or how far you feel you’ve fallen from the ideal. It is fluid, it is changing, it is versatile, connecting dots and hearts when language cannot match up.

Grace is a love language that cannot be perfected, only received and practiced.

Grace needs empty spaces to show up and so often we lack grace because we try to fill the gaps on our own. We pour in pride — I am right you are wrong, move toward me. We try to bridge with nagging, coercing, manipulating and controlling but the gap only widens, creating unbreachable chasms. We despair and forget to ask for grace.

There is a reason Jesus always asked anyone who approached him with a variation of the question, “What do you want?” Not because he was making them beg, and not to embarrass them, but to reveal that on their own they could not undo the wrong, or tip justice in their favor, or fix a broken body.

By asking for grace we reveal the truth that grace is always what we all need.

Photo by juan pablo rodriguez on Unsplash

I believe that the reason we are a noise-filled, driven society that constantly pumps words into our ears and images into our eyes is because the oldest trick of life still drives us. We’re too proud to sit with gaps.

We believe, beyond the obvious evidence we face daily, that we can fix what’s broken, master our inadequacies, and control our lives. It’s a chimera we stubbornly cling to with boastful words and try to show up when what we need to do is shut up and sit down.

Maybe the reason we’re so afraid of empty spaces, silence, unanswered questions, and blocks of unproductive time is because we still can’t receive grace.

Let grace be enough

Grace is bantered about in certain circles but unless we take time to allow it into our lives it’s just a thing we say without real application. If grace is enough to fill the empty spaces why do we stuff and cram so much into all areas of our lives?

Words, opinions, activities — we surround ourselves with energies that in the long run drain instead of fill and lift. We see any moment of downtime as a lapse in productivity and productivity is just a fancy word for life on the hamster wheel. But it’s addictive and shiny at first and fills our need to think we are important and, well, important people don’t need grace.

The closets are full, calendars crammed, mental space stuffed with nonstop stimulation and information. We’ve forgotten how to be still, our children never experience the freedom of boredom, we book from end to end and write in all the margins. Where can grace live?

“I think we need to learn how to tolerate more empty spaces.” — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Maybe we don’t really need grace if we can fill all the gaps on our own. The be more, hustle-to-get-there lifestyle doesn’t account for grace, does it? It screams you were made for more, set more goals, raise the bar.

You don’t need grace when you’re the craftswoman of your own life.

You do need grace when you’re allowing yourself to be transformed and shaped into the image of a holy God. Grace and space are prerequisites and ongoing requirements in the journey of transformation. God isn’t impressed with resumes.

“Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7 NIV)

Check your gaps, cracks, and spaces. Instead of trying to fill and caulk them, explore what it would be like to acknowledge them and then invite Grace to fill them.