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# The silence was the prayer
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/the-silence-was-the-prayer/
- Published: 2026-08-31T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-31T09:59:59.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes

*"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words." — Romans 8:26*

The last morning of August and the coffee is hot and the Bible is open and the house is quieter than it was a month ago.

I do not mean the house itself. The house makes the same sounds it has always made. The refrigerator hums. The clock in the hallway keeps its time. Biscuit is on the rug by the back door, the way he is every morning, waiting for me to finish whatever I am finishing before I let him out. The house is the same. But the quiet is different. August quiet is not July quiet. July quiet is the middle of something. August quiet is the end of something, the last page before the next part starts, and this morning the quiet has a weight to it that I noticed when I sat down.

I have been praying. Not well, if there is such a thing as praying well. Not with the right words. There are mornings when the words come and mornings when they do not and this morning they did not and so I sat with the silence and let the silence be what it was going to be and after a while I realized the silence was the prayer. Not the absence of prayer. The prayer itself.

Paul wrote that the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. I have read that verse a hundred times and this morning it landed differently because this morning I had no words and the sighing was all I had and it was enough. It was more than enough. It was the truest thing I have done all week.

September starts tomorrow. The light will be different. The mornings will be different. The prayers will be different, or the same, or both. I do not know. I am not required to know. I am required to sit here and be quiet and let the Spirit do what the Spirit does, which is intercede in the places where I cannot reach.

The coffee is getting cold. The morning is getting on. August is almost finished with me.

*Lord, where I have no words, breathe for me.*