When I was young, I never understood why my mom liked the quiet (especially in the car!). Why choose silence when you can blast your favorite music?

Now, as a mom, I get it.

There are so many layers of daily noise. I don’t even register the quiet when it settles in the empty house. I only notice it later, when we’re all back under one roof and the volume returns.

Motherhood trains us to listen to multiple soundtracks at once. The constant hum we’re unconsciously scanning for distress (or lack of noise, ironically). The voices — kids narrating their lives, asking questions, wanting something. Plus the noise inside our own heads — the mental tabs we never close, the running list of to-dos and to-dreams, what-ifs, and probably also the most annoying chorus your kiddo sang on repeat last night.

I recently learned a term in The Wall Street Journal from Sam Wineburg called “critical ignoring.” He describes it as vigilance over our own vulnerability. He says it's up to us to stop ingesting "the forever chemicals of outrage bait, and the microplastics of misinformation-for-profit.”

I don't think of vulnerability as a bad thing here. Not vulnerably as flaws, but rather things God gave us to connect with each other: sensitivity, empathy, and our desire to know and understand. Without discernment, though, these vulnerabilities can become exhausting.

Jesus never competed with noise. Often in Scripture, we see Him stepping away from the crowds, the needs, the questions and even the good work to be alone. Am I saying Jesus practiced critical ignoring? Maybe… except that He was the Messiah, so not really. Jesus stepped away from the noise not because the world wasn’t important but because He needed anchoring in prayer.

What things in your life do you think are “good,” but actually don't really give you peace?

I remember a desperate prayer one night with my second baby: “Why am I doing everything right, but everything still feels so wrong?” I had absorbed too much.

We don’t get to choose a lot of things when we have littles, friends. But we do get to choose what we ingest into our minds and hearts.

I love that this Psalm doesn’t shame us for looking because we will always be drawn to something. It simply asks God to turn our eyes from the things that really aren’t serving the life God planned for us.

To me this year, peace and contentment looks like learned critical ignoring. Turning down the volume on what exhausts me so I can better hear the voices that restore me.

Emily

Have more time? Learn more about critical ignoring in the WSJ article here, Your Key Survival Skill for 2026: Critical Ignoring - In an age of endless low-quality information, it’s time to fight our instinct to seek out and absorb all we can. It takes practice.