Sitting with God in the quiet has never come easily to me. It is not that I do not enjoy silence, rather, I am scared of what it could possibly bring. What if he tells me something I do not want to hear? What if God is calling me somewhere I do not want to go? The easy solution is to fill my mind with as much noise as possible – I sit on my phone for hours every day, I listen to music on my way to class, I watch TV in my free time. If I can escape silence, then I can escape my thoughts. What I did not realize is that my tendency to avoid silence is what was keeping me from enjoying peace. His peace.

In September, I started the process of “Discipleship” through FOCUS at the University of Arkansas. I was so excited. My prayer life had been feeling dry and I could not figure out why. I had stopped feeling God’s presence in prayer, and I was frustrated because I never felt like I got a response from Him. When I brought this up to my mentor, she said, “Just wait, I promise you will feel differently as we go through Discipleship.” This was not the answer I was looking for. I wanted her to tell me exactly what I was doing wrong – why I was not feeling God’s presence. The next week, we started the “Luke Challenge.” For thirty days, we would sit with a passage from the Gospel of Luke. She challenged us to do at least twenty minutes of prayer, meditating and sitting in silence with Jesus.

The first few days, I treated this process of prayer (Lectio Divina) as a book report. I wrote down a verse and then I annotated it. I sat in silence, but filled it with writing in my journal instead of really sitting with Jesus and actively listening to Him. I sat my obligatory twenty minutes in Adoration, and then immediately got up and went to class. I still did not fully understand what I was doing wrong. On about the fifth day, something changed. I felt God calling me to stay a little longer in Adoration and really enter into the silence with Him – unafraid of what it may bring.

I did not speak, I did not ask. I let the quiet come. I let my anxieties surface, and I let my fears and desires run in my head. But, strangely, I felt peace. I began to hear God’s voice whisper to me somehow louder than my own thoughts. He reminded me of my baptism with “the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16), encouraged me to “put out into deep water … [and] leave everything and follow Him” (Luke 5:4,11), and assured me of his providence over me: “will he not much more provide for you” (Luke 12:28). I knew then why my prayer life had been suffering – I never stopped talking long enough to listen to God’s response. I had filled my head and heart with noise, because I was afraid of what the silence would bring. Silence made me vulnerable, and that’s exactly what God asked me to be. He wanted me to acknowledge my fear and anxiety, so that he could show me his power over them.

Why is sitting in silence so unattractive in our world? Because Satan knows that noise is the perfect tool to keep us from developing and nourishing a genuine, intentional relationship with our Father. 1 John 4:4 says, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” God resides deep within our very being. God invites us out of the noise, into the silence, into his peace. Step out of the bustle of life and be vulnerable with the God who loves you. Rest in the comfort of his warm embrace. “Then the Lord said: Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will pass by. There was a strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing the rocks but, the Lord was not in the wind, the earthquake or the fire that followed.” Where was he? In “a light silent sound” (1 Kings 19:11-12).

Annie Wendel is a sophomore at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Christ the King Church in Little Rock is her home parish.

Fear has a funny way of “freezing time,” making us feel like we are helpless, like we cannot move. It attacks our trust in God and breaks it down bit by bit until we lose our ability to be vulnerable with him. 

The devil inserts himself into our minds, trying to hide all the times when God revealed himself in the past so that we start to doubt his dependability. Why? Because the devil knows that God is consistent, and he knows that in times where the future is unknown, our first instinct is to find something to hold onto. If we are not able to cling to God in the present, we cling to the past, and that is where the devil does his work. 

At the beginning of my second semester of college, I felt like my life was going great. I had found a friend group who was grounded in faith and family who genuinely helped me be a better version of myself. I had healed and matured from a difficult situation in the first semester, and my faith life was seemingly strong. However, as I became busier with school, friendships and travel, my faith life began to take a back seat. 

My quiet time with God was limited, and instead the majority of my prayer time became the one hour on Sunday that I attended Mass. My trust in God became shaky as old wounds opened up, insecurities sprouted and the future that I hoped for started to feel out of reach. 

When the devil tried to tell me that God was not present, and the future that I had dreamed of was never going to happen, I gave him my ear and began to worry that what he was saying was true. He whispered (loudly) that nothing in the future would be better than where I had been in the past. An old anxiety began to flood my consciousness. A part of me would tell myself to look back on all the times that I had been in various trials and see how God had helped me through them. He was there in the midst, just as he promised. 

Even if the outcome was different from what I had wanted, his goodness and his love were present there. But then, the devil would tell me that this time was different. God was not going to help me again because this time, I was where I was because I had made a decision that had messed up God’s plan, and it was too late to get back on track. I trusted him and doubted God. I knew the devil was trapping me, but I could not figure out how to get out. 

I sought out a conversation with a person who had helped me before. I heard something from her that resonated loudly over the noise in my head. “Fear blocks God’s grace.” The reason I could not deny the devil’s lies to me is because I let him back me into a corner of fear. 

Who do children cling to when they are scared? A stranger? Someone who has proven time and time again that they are untrustworthy? No, they cling to their parents. To someone who has never abandoned them, someone who would go through heaven and hell for them. I can ask the same question of us. 

Who do we cling to when we are scared, when fear is all we can see? The devil? Someone who only tells lies, someone whose sole purpose is to make us scared? No, we cling to God. Someone who has shown his love not only in the good times but also in the bad times. Someone who has actually gone through heaven and hell to save us. Fear has no foothold in our lives when we cling to the one whose love and grace dispels all of the devil’s lies.

St. Teresa of Kolkata once said, “Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that he can kiss you.” When fear is at its worst, and God seems like he is so far away, it is the opposite. God is trying that much harder to get to us, and all we have to do is break down our walls and let him. 

“But the Lord is faithful; He will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3).

Annie Wendel is a rising sophomore at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Christ the King Church in Little Rock is her home parish.

To gain the full Razorback college experience, I recently got up at 4:30 a.m. with a couple of my friends to wait in the student section line for the Arkansas vs. Alabama football game. 

While the morning cold and then afternoon heat during 10 hours of waiting for the game to begin were not the best, there were some really fun sides to the waiting: I got to bond with some girls that I met through my sorority; I got to meet some new people in line; I got to be there for the third quarter of the game when Arkansas started to show ‘Bama our true colors, and I got to check a box on my bucket list. 

The outcome of the game was not what I wanted, but waiting in line was one of the most fun things I have done since coming to college. Had I not undergone the long hours of waiting, I would never have been able to list all of the abovementioned wonders of my day. You can say that “the wait was worth it.”

Often the seasons of waiting in our lives are like how my waiting in line was. There’s the heat and the cold; the side of waiting that makes us question why or what we are even waiting for. There’s the loss; the side of waiting that makes us wonder if anything good can come out of this. But then, in that waiting, there are things like the bonding of friends at dinner after the game; the side of waiting that helps us to know that even the losses of the past are nothing compared to the joy that God has planned for our future. There’s hope. And unlike the hope of a Razorback win that day, when it comes to God, hope is never diminished and never unfulfilled. 

Periods of waiting are sometimes overlooked. In a world that moves at a constant, quick pace, most cannot even slow down for a second to realize they are in one. Others know they are in a period of waiting but would love nothing more than to be out of it. Most of the time, I am part of the latter group. As someone who craves control, I would love nothing more than to see God’s grand picture for my life. But there’s a reason he only lets us see one puzzle piece at a time: if not for periods of waiting, where else would we learn to trust him? These seasons are perfect areas for exponential growth in faith. One of my favorite Bible verses is “Who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance…and the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the spirit, because it intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.” (Romans 8:24-27) Not our will, but God’s. 

The word “waiting” makes it seem like we are waiting on God to work in our lives. This is not the case. God is already working, and he never stops. However, God is waiting on our acceptance of his plan. Like I said before, the joy that God has planned for our future is nothing compared to what we are experiencing now in the waiting. However, the one thing that God asks for in this season is acceptance and trust. Acceptance of not only his plan for our lives but of his love which carries us through a time in our life that is not necessarily a part of our plan. He also asks for our trust that his outcome will make us happier than we have ever been. If we continue looking to the past, we lose our trust in him because we think that where we were is better than where he could take us. If we try to take our lives into our own hands, we decline his help and his plan for our lives.

Challenge yourself in your next season of waiting, and let it be a period of outstanding growth in love of our Lord. Have faith in the good that he has planned for you. Trust him with your life and with your happiness. After all, what do you have to lose?

Annie Wendel is a freshman at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville. She attends Christ the King Church in Little Rock.

Anxiety is a tough thing. It creeps up when you least expect it, and it does not readily leave. It is easy to let fear and anxiety overtake us and nestle their place into our minds. But if we trust in God’s plan and know that we are enough no matter our circumstances, what power does anxiety hold over us? 

As a high school senior, I get asked a myriad of questions. Questions about what college I will attend, what major I will study and what profession I want to pursue. I am used to the questions, and I am ready for them: “I am going to the University of Arkansas, majoring in nursing. I want to go on missionary trips to help those in need with my medical skills.” I know that this plan I have for my life is not guaranteed. God may have a different plan. 

However, in my first semester of senior year, behind those words was a hidden fear under my mask of confidence. What if I failed my classes? What if I never made it into nursing school, and I had to leave Fayetteville to go to a different college? What if I lost my faith in college? I’d planned out my life so exactly that the probability that something could go differently was almost 100 percent. I left no room for God’s input because I knew what I wanted to do, and I was scared he did not want the same. I had told so many people that if I did not actually meet this goal, I was not only failing myself but my parents, my siblings and everyone I told about my plans.

I have had anxiety in the past, but this time it felt different. Anxiety controlled me. It disturbed my sleep, messed with my emotions and created so much fear toward my future that I could not think of anything else, including God. When I let myself drown in fear, I left him out of the picture, implying that this problem was the one thing that he was not big enough to fix. In prayer, I told God that I trusted in his plan for me, then the next day, I would text my sister, bombarding her with questions about what I would do if I failed all my classes in college. Uncertainties overwhelmed my mind and my heart.

This past November, my youth group held a worship and praise event in the middle of the school week. I almost skipped it, claiming I had too much homework, but I knew that all I needed was to sit in God’s presence, so I drove to my church and sat in the very back to be alone. When the music began, I was moved to go to reconciliation. I stepped into the confessional, and I barely got three words out when I started crying uncontrollably. I confessed that I had been so stressed recently that I had forgotten to rely on God and I had placed insincere trust in him. In that confessional, I felt myself let go. Let go of the fear. Let go of the anxiety. Let go of control. Because he was a family friend, the priest knew that I held myself to high standards. For my penance, he told me to pray 10 Hail Marys and, at the end of each, thank God for “making me enough.” 

When I left the confessional, I sat down in my pew, and I prayed those 10 Hail Marys. As I said, “Thank you, God, for making me enough,” I felt the presence of Jesus kneeling next to me, holding my hand. I looked to the monstrance on the altar, and I saw Jesus’s eyes staring back into mine, telling me I am enough for him. 

I still struggle with uncertainty, but now I know how to handle it. When I start to have fears, the first thing that I do is recenter my mind on Jesus. Anxiety often strikes when overwhelmed, causing God’s presence to be overshadowed by my “to-do” lists. Putting God at the center of my mind gives clarity and peace. Sit in the presence of Jesus, and anxiety and fear will have no choice but to bow to his greatness. “When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.” (Psalms 94:19)

Annie Wendel, who graduated May 24 from Mount St. Mary Academy, attends Christ the King Church in Little Rock. Her brother, Deacon Daniel Wendel, is being ordained a priest May 28.