Creating Space to Hear God When Life Feels Like a Forest

You are tired because you are carrying more than you were ever meant to hold. Creating space to hear God — not striving harder, not managing better — is what makes faithful leadership sustainable. When we stop long enough to receive, we finally have something real to give.

There is a poem that names the problem better than most sermons can. The poet Martha Postlethwaite, writing in her collection Addiction and Grace, offers this invitation: stop trying to save the whole world, and instead create a clearing in the dense forest of your life — a place to wait patiently until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands. Gem Fadling, co-founder of Unhurried Living, first encountered these words through his spiritual director, and they landed not as a nice idea but as a diagnosis. Most of us are not failing at spiritual life because we lack information. We are failing because we have never cleared enough interior space to actually receive what God is trying to give us.

Why Are You So Tired Even When You're Doing Good Things?

The answer is not weak faith or poor time management. It is that the human soul was not designed to absorb the weight of every need it encounters. Gem names this with pastoral honesty: we see and hear what is happening in nearly every corner of the planet — the suffering, the injustice, the division — and we feel responsible to respond, to fix, to save. Psychologically, emotionally, and even physically, this is too much for any one person to bear.

Postlethwaite's poem does not call us to disengage from the world's pain. It calls us to resist the illusion that we can or should carry all of it. There is a crucial difference. Disengagement is abdication. What she describes is discernment — learning to know the specific place where our energy is meant to flow, rather than bleeding out in all directions at once.

Unhurried leadership understands something that urgent leadership never gets around to: we cannot pour out what we have not first received. This is not a productivity principle. It is a spiritual one, rooted in the recognition that our leadership is only as deep as our inner life. When we skip the filling and move straight to the giving, we are not leading from abundance. We are leading on fumes, hoping no one notices.

Take a few minutes today to answer honestly: In what way does your life feel like a dense forest right now? Write it down. You do not have to solve it yet — just name it.

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How Do You Actually Create Space to Hear God?

This is where Gem resists the familiar script. She is quick to say this is not another message about failing at quiet times — the implicit guilt of the leader who knows they should pray more but cannot seem to make it happen. The invitation is gentler and more practical than that.

Gem identifies two distinct kinds of clearing. The first is shaped by time and location — a set-apart moment where you listen through scripture, prayer, journaling, silence, or solitude. These are tangible clearings, created with intention. They require a decision and a calendar entry, but they are not complicated. The second kind of clearing is interior — a posture of inward attentiveness you carry through your day. Inspiration, Gem observes, often arrives when we are not striving for it. The person who has cultivated a listening heart finds that wisdom surfaces naturally, between meetings, on a walk, in the car.

Both forms of clearing matter. Neither replaces the other. And the goal of both is the same: to arrive in a posture of what the poem calls cupped hands. Cupped hands do not grasp. They do not clutch or perform or manage. They receive. They convey expectancy, trust, and a willingness to wait for what God will give rather than seizing what we think we need. This posture, Gem says, is not passive. It is one of the most courageous acts of leadership a Christian leader can practice.

This week, identify one tangible clearing — even fifteen minutes — and protect it. Not to produce anything. Simply to listen.

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What Do You Hear When You Finally Stop?

The first thing the clearing gives you is not a strategy or a calling or a next step. The first thing you hear — the thing God seems most eager to say — is this: you are loved. Gem grounds this in 1 John 4, where the apostle John does not say God loves but that God is love. It is impossible for God not to love us. That is not a warm feeling to collect before moving on to the real work. It is the foundation from which everything else in a leader's life must flow.

This is where the poem's deepest wisdom lands. When you wait with cupped hands, the thing that falls into them is not first a mission or a mandate. It is an identity. You are the beloved. And it is only from that received identity — not from urgency, not from guilt, not from the fear of what won't get done — that you will know how to give yourself to this world, which is, as Postlethwaite writes, "so worthy of rescue."

Gem closes with three journal questions drawn directly from the poem:

1. Where does your life feel like a dense forest right now?
2. Where might you create a clearing to wait patiently?
3. And what does trust — those cupped hands — look like for you in this season?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the specific kind of honest self-examination that replenishing spiritual practices make possible. Becoming scattered and overwhelmed, Gem is clear, does not help anybody. The world does not need its leaders frantic. It needs them grounded, discerning, and faithful.

Read the poem one more time, and then sit with whatever surfaces. That is the clearing. That is where the song begins.

Two Kinds of Waiting: Which One Are You Practicing?

A Note for Weary Christian Leaders Seeking to Slow Down

If you are a pastor, ministry leader, or church staff member somewhere in the middle of a noisy, demanding season, you are not alone in feeling the weight of it. Unhurried Living exists for exactly this moment — for leaders who are quietly exhausted but are not ready to give up on the deeper life they sense is possible. Whether you are searching for a regular spiritual director, looking for a community of leaders who understand this tension, or simply ready for a weekly email that reminds you to breathe, there is room here for you. This is not a program designed to add more to your plate. It is an invitation to a different pace altogether.

The Courage to Receive What Only God Can Give

The world does not need its leaders depleted. It needs them grounded, present, and full of something they did not manufacture on their own. Creating space to hear God is not a luxury you earn after the urgent work is done — it is the work that makes everything else sustainable and true.

When Gem returned to the poem at the end of this episode, it was not for sentiment. It was because some invitations need to be heard more than once before they find their way in. May you find the courage to stop trying to save the whole world, and instead receive — with cupped hands, in unhurried stillness — the song God is placing gently into your care. If these themes are resonating, we invite you to sign up for the Unhurried Living weekly email, where reflections like this arrive each week to help you slow down and lead from a deeper place. And if you are ready to go further, learn more about PACE, Unhurried Living's 21-month certificate training in spiritual leadership and soul care.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I create space to hear God when my life feels too full and busy? A: Creating space to hear God begins with a decision, not a perfect schedule. Gem Fadling suggests two kinds of clearing: a set-apart time for scripture, prayer, journaling, or silence, and an inner posture of attentiveness you carry through the day. Even a consistent fifteen-minute protected space can become a genuine clearing over time.

Q: Why am I so tired even though I'm doing good things? A: Exhaustion in ministry leaders often comes not from doing wrong things but from carrying more than any one person was designed to hold. The problem is not your work — it is the illusion that you must respond to every need you see. Wisdom begins with discerning where your specific energy is meant to flow, not spreading yourself across all of it.

Q: What does unhurried leadership actually look like in practice? A: Unhurried leadership starts from the conviction that you cannot pour out what you have not first received. It means regularly reassessing your capacity, protecting space to listen before you act, and leading from a place of overflow rather than depletion. It is not passive or disengaged — it is grounded and discerning.

Q: How do I stop trying to save everyone and honor my own capacity? A: Honoring your capacity is not weakness — it is wisdom. Knowing your God-given abilities, desires, and passions helps you discern not whether to give yourself to the world, but how and where. Becoming scattered does not serve anyone. Focused, grounded leadership is far more faithful than frantic availability.

Q: What is the posture of cupped hands in spiritual life? A: Cupped hands, drawn from the poem by Martha Postlethwaite, represent expectancy, trust, and a willingness to receive rather than grasp. It is the physical image of an interior posture — one that waits with belief that God will give what is needed and guide how we are meant to offer ourselves. It is the opposite of striving.