Stepping back from the noise. Who emerged when no one was watching?
It wasn’t a retreat.
It wasn’t meditation.
It wasn’t a sabbatical in the woods with clean air and time to reflect.
It was a hospital bed.
And I couldn’t walk.

The MS had made its way into my spine.
I was 170 kilos (375 Pounds), easy.
Couldn’t move. Couldn’t go to the bathroom on my own. I couldnt even fit in the MRI machines.
And I couldn’t leave ... not the bed, not the room, not the thoughts.

No phone. No distractions.
Just a white ceiling… and a body that had stopped listening to me.

That’s when the quiet came.

Not peace. Not calm.
Just quiet.
And in that stillness… the flood started.

Regret, first.
So much regret.

Why was I like this?
Why didn’t I walk more when I had the chance?
Why didn’t I listen when they told me to slow down, take care of myself, live with less stress?

And then… the heavier questions.
Not just why me…
but why now?

Why wasn’t God protecting me like He used to?
Why did He let this happen?
Why take away my most basic needs?

It didn’t feel like abandonment.
It felt like punishment.
Like all the things I had pushed away ... the choices I had delayed, the truths I didn’t want to see ... had finally circled back… and this was the cost.

And yet…
what struck me most wasn’t what I felt.
It was what I didn’t feel.

No anger.
Not at God. Not at my body. Not even at myself.

I thought I’d be furious.
I wasn’t.

I just… sat in the sadness.
And part of me whispered, “Maybe… I deserved this.”

But then something strange happened.
The silence didn’t just sit there.
It started talking back.

Not in visions or revelations.
Just… presence.
Just me, in a room, having full conversations with God like He was sitting in the next chair.
I didn’t have a phone. I didn’t have distractions.
I had nothing ... and maybe that’s exactly what I needed.

The quiet didn’t break me.
It introduced me to myself.

Not the performer.
Not the fixer.
Not the loud personality or the cultural translator or the “man who can.”

Just… me.

And in that stillness, I realized something I hadn’t been able to see before:
The pain hadn’t come to punish me.
It came to interrupt me.
To pull me out of the noise.
To give me one last shot at paying attention.

And I did.

So when I say I got quiet and heard myself…
I don’t mean I discovered something new.
I mean I finally listened to the voice that had been whispering for years ...
beneath the weight, beneath the hustle, beneath the endless need to be okay.

And once I heard it…
I couldn’t unhear it. And here I am today.