by Jennifer Greene-Sullivan
A Life of Constant Motion
For most of my life, I have been a classic overachiever. If there was something to do, I did it—and usually several things at once. I did not simply stay busy. I pursued busyness with intensity.
In fact, the pattern started before I was even born. I arrived at thirty-two weeks gestations because I quite literally kicked a hole in my placenta. My mother likes to remind me that I entered the world early and in a hurry. Looking back now, that seems strangely fitting.
As a young girl, I sang in church and eventually directed the choir. I spent hours preparing talent pieces for pageants and practicing for voice lessons and piano. At school I cheered—football, basketball, and competition squads—and I was determined to maintain a perfect average in every class.
Even as a teenager, I rarely slowed down. I taught Sunday School while working two jobs and babysitting whenever someone needed help. Somewhere along the way, I became convinced that rest was something other people did, not something I was allowed to do.
Those habits followed me into adulthood. I completed an associate’s degree in a single year and continued pushing forward through undergraduate and graduate work. By the time I was twenty-six, I had two children and had finished both my bachelor’s and first master’s degrees.
The pattern did not slow as the years went on; while working on my doctorate, I was raising children, taking classes, and teaching high school and college at the same time. I never allowed myself to stop long enough to reflect. Instead, I burned myself out again and again—and then felt guilty whenever I rested.
The Sudden Quiet
I did not notice the quiet immediately. When life changes slowly, it can take a while before you realize something significant has shifted.
For me, the quiet arrived all at once. In the same season that I stepped away from teaching, three of my daughters—Kasey, Anya, and Sophia—moved out within the span of a few weeks. August and September 2024 came with boxes, transitions, and new chapters for each of them.
At first the house still felt full of activity. There were phone calls, visits, and the natural adjustments that come when children begin building lives of their own. Yet underneath those changes, something deeper had begun to shift.
By the time I left The River in February of 2025, the quiet had fully settled into my mind and into my bones.
My life suddenly felt unfamiliar to me. For decades, my days had been structured around classrooms, students, ministry, and constant interaction with people. Now the house was calmer, the phone rang less often, and my schedule no longer revolved around hundreds of teenagers each week.
Instead, most days centered around Chris, Liam, and the rhythms of home, and I was still trying to understand what that new rhythm meant.
The New Rhythm of Ordinary Days
Life looks very different now than it once did, but that does not mean it has become idle. In fact, most days are still full. The difference is that the work I do now happens quietly and mostly behind the scenes.
These days I spend a good portion of my time meal prepping. Liam and I are gluten free because of celiac disease, while Chris is learning to navigate a new diabetic diet and a long-standing sugar addiction. Cooking has become both a necessity and a challenge as I try to keep everyone healthy while still feeding a busy household.
My mornings begin early, usually around 5:45 am. I take the dogs out, start the laundry, tidy the house, and cook breakfast before the rest of the family is fully awake. I pack Liam’s lunch and baseball bag, and we leave a little space in the morning for his AWANA lesson and prayer before the day really begins.
Once the guys leave, I finish up the remaining chores and spend time in the Word and prayer. After that, I head to the office where I work on budgets, bills, taxes, and payroll for the business. When the work is caught up, I often write for a while before the afternoon begins to unfold.
The real work of the day begins when Liam gets off the bus.
Since discovering that Liam is colorblind, we have been working hard to help him catch up in areas of literacy that were affected by that diagnosis. Many afternoons look a lot like homeschooling. We sit together working through English, math, spelling sight words, and written expression.
Sometimes I catch myself scheduling Liam the same way I used to schedule my students.
Baseball practice or games start around 5:30 most evenings. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays are filled with the field. Wednesdays and Sundays belong to church. By the time we return home each night, there is supper to finish, baths to run, dogs to take care of, and one more round of tidying before bed.
Then, the cycle begins again the next morning.
In many ways, Friday nights and Saturdays are the quietest parts of our week. Yet even then, the chores and cooking seem to wait patiently for their turn again.
When the Noise Is Gone
Even though my days are still full, something about this season feels different. The work I do now rarely receives the kind of affirmation my old life once provided. There are no classrooms full of students. There are no constant conversations in hallways, no meetings, no programs, and no crowds. The noise that once surrounded my days has quietly faded away.
When the noise disappears, something unexpected happens. You begin to hear your own thoughts more clearly, and sometimes those thoughts are not particularly kind.
I find myself wondering if I should be doing more. The old measuring stick in my mind still whispers that productivity must always be visible. Teaching, leading, organizing, and producing things that other people see once provided a steady stream of affirmation.
Now much of my work happens quietly.
Cooking meals.
Helping Liam learn sight words.
Managing the business finances.
Preparing for practices and games.
Good work, certainly—but work that the world rarely applauds.
This morning the rain has fallen steadily, slowing everything down. Liam is home from school because of the weather, and the shop is quieter than usual. Instead of enjoying the slower rhythm of the day, I find myself wrestling with a strange emotion.
Loneliness.
The feeling surprised me. Why should a rainy day and a slower pace feel like loss? Why should quiet moments leave me feeling less accomplished than a day filled with activity?
The truth is my internal barometer is still calibrated to old patterns of behavior. For decades, my sense of purpose was measured by how much I produced, and how many people surrounded me.
When the noise stopped, the old measurements did not immediately disappear.
Learning to Pray at the Stove
This past weekend the Lord quietly interrupted my thinking. Saturday night and again Sunday morning, as I stood in the kitchen preparing yet another round of meals, a simple thought settled into my spirit. While I was completing what had begun to feel like the most undesirable task of my day—meal preparation—I should be praying. Interceding. Talking with Him.
At first, the idea almost surprised me. I had been standing at that stove for weeks, planning meals that fit both a gluten-free diet for Liam and me and a new diabetic diet for Chris. The work felt repetitive and exhausting. Chop. Stir. Measure. Repeat.
Yet, in that moment, I realized something I had overlooked. Those hours in the kitchen did not have to be empty. They could become prayer.
The Kitchen Became My Prayer Closet
That realization stirred another uncomfortable question in my heart.
When did I move prayer into the category of inconvenience?
I do not believe I did it consciously. I love the Lord deeply, and time with Him has always mattered to me. But somewhere along the way, I quietly confined prayer to certain places—devotions in the morning, church services, or moments intentionally set aside.
Meanwhile, I treated ordinary work as something separate. Standing at the stove that morning, it occurred to me that perhaps the Lord had slowed my life for a reason. Perhaps the kitchen was never meant to be separate from prayer at all.
As the vegetables simmered and the pots rattled on the stove, I began praying quietly for my family. I prayed for Chris’s healing. I prayed for Liam’s learning. I prayed for my daughters as they build their own lives. Without realizing it, the kitchen had slowly become my prayer closet.
The Quiet Work God Is Teaching Me
For many years, I believed the most meaningful work happened in visible places—classrooms, churches, conferences, and crowded schedules filled with activity.
But Scripture says something different.
“Pray without ceasing.”
— 1 Thessalonians 5:17
Prayer does not require a platform or an audience. It can happen in kitchens, in laundry rooms, and in the quiet spaces of ordinary days. Perhaps the Lord did not slow my life so that I would accomplish less. Perhaps He slowed it so that I could finally learn how to walk with Him while doing the most ordinary things.
A Gentle Reflection
This season of life still feels new to me. Some days the quiet feels peaceful. Other days, I still wrestle with the old habit of measuring my worth by how much I accomplish, yet slowly, the Lord is teaching me something different.
The quiet spaces of life are not empty places that need to be filled with more activity because they are invitations. He has presented me with invitations to turn my attention toward Him again and again throughout the day.
Perhaps the life of faith is not always found in crowded schedules or visible accomplishments. Perhaps it is often discovered in quiet kitchens, calm offices, and ordinary routines where prayer quietly becomes part of daily life. Ultimately, learning to abide in those moments is the work God intended all along.
Scripture Study
Take a few moments this week to reflect on these passages and consider how they speak to seasons of quiet, abiding, and prayer.
1 Thessalonians 5:17
“Pray without ceasing.”
What might it look like to weave prayer naturally throughout the ordinary tasks of your day?
John 15:4–5
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
What does it mean to remain connected to Christ even in the quiet or unseen moments of life?
Colossians 3:23
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”
How might ordinary work—cooking, cleaning, caring for family, managing responsibilities—become an act of worship when it is offered to the Lord?
A Prayer
Lord,
You see the seasons of life that feel full and the seasons that feel quiet. You understand the habits we have formed and the ways we measure our worth by what we accomplish. Teach us how to abide in You. Help us learn to recognize Your presence in the ordinary moments of each day. Turn our routines into opportunities for prayer and our quiet spaces into places where we hear Your voice more clearly. When we are tempted to measure ourselves by the world’s standards, remind us that our identity is found in belonging to You. Guide our hearts to rest in Your presence and to trust the work You are doing within us.
Amen.
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