The Noisy Roommate
An honest reflection on ego, surrender, and the quiet work of keeping your life pointed toward God
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
— John 3:30
The voice that pulls you away from Him will always be louder than the one that calls you back. The work is learning which one to follow.
What Was Placed There
Somewhere in the last couple of months the idea of a writing endeavor crashed into my inner dialogue with such force that I could not dismiss it as a passing thought. It arrived fully formed, detailed, and insistent, like something placed rather than created.
At first I told myself it was simply a cool idea. Then I realized it felt like something more. So I began to pray. I prayed during my daily fifty-minute commute to-and-from work, hands steady on the wheel while the road stretched out in front of me, tires humming against the pavement as my mind turned inward. I prayed while cooking dinner, standing over the grill with heat rising against my face and the low crackle of flame mixing with the quiet sounds of the evening. I prayed while walking our property, the boys dictating my path, noses low along the forest floor, moving with the same purpose I’ve learned to admire no matter our geographic location.
For weeks I asked God to show me whether this was His will or merely my own. I sought clarity, not assumption.
Then, as suddenly as the idea had arrived several weeks prior, the answer came: “Do it.”
The process of discerning that permission was more layered than I can describe here, but the message was unmistakable: proceed, and keep God at the center of everything.
Work That Carried No Life
The desire to write about the things I love has lived quietly inside me since childhood. I wrote several books as a kid, just for fun. They were definitely no best sellers, but the desire and love to write has always been there.
Writing has always been a form of release and self-expression, a place where thoughts and emotions became something that could be understood, where mental pictures could be painted with words that carried the scent of the plains and the feel of wind moving through the terrain.
Yet I could never settle on a single focus, nor did I possess the belief I could ever be a “writer.”
After more than twenty years of active service in the military, where I spent twelve of those years crafting stories, features, public affairs guidance, talking points, and speeches, and my eventual retirement, I finally found myself with the space to consider writing as more than a hobby. The space was unfamiliar at first. Life felt like stepping into a room you didn’t know existed, where everything is quiet enough that your own thoughts and anxiety begin to sound louder than you expect.
Before leaving the service, I told myself I no longer wanted to work for someone else. I wanted to do something rooted in genuine passion, the kind of journey leading me to a place people describe when they say “if you love what you do you will never work a day in your life.”
More than a year ago I tried to create my first writing adventure by writing about organizational leadership, strategic thinking, and change management. Those are subjects I know like the back of my hand from my time in uniform. I created models, outlined frameworks, and produced content I thought might open doors to consulting work.
The words came easily enough, but they felt empty. The effort reminded me of drafting white papers for senior leaders, sitting behind a desk long after the room had gone quiet, the soft glow of a screen the only light left on, refining language that checked every box but stirred nothing. It was competent work, yet it carried no life.
It was the what without the why.
The Pull That Would Not Let Go
The one genre that consistently drew praise and genuine response was whatever I wrote about recent hunting trips, the prairie, and the dogs.
When I described long walks behind my bird dogs, the wind moving through waist-high grass like waves across an endless sea, brushing against your legs with a steady rhythm, or the way a single point could rewire an entire day and pull every sense into focus, people told me the words stirred something in them, while urging me to write more. Those pieces felt effortless. They felt anchored in something I was meant to do, something that did not require forcing because it already existed within me.
Still, putting myself out there carried real fear.
I had spent years in Special Operations where a minimal digital footprint was essential. Exposing my thoughts, my stories, and my faith to strangers felt vulnerable in a way I had never faced. The prospect of ridicule or dismissal made my stomach tighten in a way that was hard to ignore. So I kept kicking the can down the road. I told myself nobody really wanted that kind of writing, and it was safer to keep doing what was easy and paid the bills. So for the last couple years I’ve humbly been satisfied doing the work as a strategic communications consultant and speechwriter.
But as I grew closer to God and my relationship with Him strengthened, things began to change. I started to view life from a different perspective. The desire to live a life according to His word, aligned with His will for me and not my will for myself, grew stronger. I began to seek what it was He intended for me to do with this life.
The quiet pull to write, which had once been easy to ignore, refused to stay quiet after returning from North Dakota this past October.
Ideas kept arriving. Write about the bonds you have forged with the dogs; about finding God under His vast canvas we call sky; about traveling thirty hours to stand in the middle of nowhere simply to witness the spectacle of dog versus bird, where the only sounds are wind, wings, and breath carried across open ground. Write about sunsets that set your soul on fire, where the sky shifts into colors that feel like you’re peering into Heaven itself.
The thoughts arrived in a steady, insistent loop so undeniable everything felt like I was being told to do something. The noise was so loud I felt forced to pray about it. I asked God to remove the desire if it was not of His will. Instead the ideas grew louder, more persistent, harder to ignore. After weeks of praying the same prayer I understood I did not need to ask again.
So I did what the Special Operations community had gifted me, and I enacted my bias for action and built the aircraft while in flight. I developed a content strategy, gathered previously published pieces, wrote several new stories to maintain a steady flow, and prayed a great deal more. Two days later everything was organized and ready.
The last task was to finalize the name… and the only one that felt right was “Chasing the Quiet Pull.”
I clicked launch. Suddenly everything felt aligned with God, my soul, and my mind. Excitement would be too small a word. I felt humbled, honored, and deeply grateful for the not-so-subtle nudge.
I was finally venturing out there with the hope of something becoming a way of life, and faith that in Him all will be well.
Two weeks in I was moving steadily. Six articles published. I even learned how to create my first video from the hours of film I’ve accumulated over the years. Accounts went live on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Despite every algorithm’s attempt to limit reach, I gained a subtle foundation of subscribers and followers. To some the numbers may seem small right now, but they represent people who have chosen to believe in the work enough to follow along. They’re people who said yes, and I carry a great deal of gratitude with me every day, and into every piece I create.
When the Noise Found Me
Then Resurrection Sunday arrived.
My wife and I returned from church and were finishing our usual end-of-week tasks. The house carried the familiar rhythm of a Sunday afternoon, quiet but alive with small movements and routine with enough stillness where you can hear the faint shifting of things from room to room.
As we progressed with checking chores off our list, I suddenly felt exhausted and decided to lay down on the couch beside Dunham for a long nap, his steady breathing and warmth making it easy to drift off. When my wife woke me a couple of hours later I needed a moment to gain my bearings. So I reached for my phone to check on the new video I published the night before and see if there was any feedback.
As soon as I unlocked my phone, Facebook’s feed greeted me as it was the last thing I had open before falling asleep. The feed immediately refreshed, and the first thing my eyes saw was an announcement from a member of the upland hunting community with a six-figure following about how he is launching a new project. The project’s language was eerily similar to the description I had written for Chasing the Quiet Pull. Nearly verbatim.
My mind began to spiral. Not because I suspected plagiarism, but because I suddenly felt the small space I believed was uniquely mine was now crowded, or worse - taken, by someone with vastly more reach. I imagined prospective readers assuming I copied him. Comments flooded my imagination: “You copied this,” “You’re a phony.”
Irritation rose quickly into anger, and I could feel it settle into my chest, heavy and sharp.
I withdrew into myself. I got up from the couch with a ball of anger in my stomach that felt like I ate a bag of habaneros. I became short with my wife. Quiet. Removed. My world felt dark and shook as I considered deleting everything and walking away.
When dinner time came I stood outside by the grill while my wife cooked her signature seared salmon and sautéed zucchini. The air carried the smell of food cooking, the soft hiss of heat against the food’s surface, and had the hallmarks of an evening that would normally have felt calm. But it wasn’t. Or at least, I wasn’t.
As my wife cooked she noticed my silence and asked if I was okay. I muttered quickly “I’m fine.” Her intuition wasn’t satisfied so she asked again. Despite every desire to resist, the tug inside me said to speak. I caved and proceeded to word-vomit the entire spiral of jealousy, comparison, and self-pity.
When I finished she looked at me with calm hazel eyes and said something simple and devastatingly clear: “If you’re doing it for God, and the work glorifies Him, then there is enough space for both of you.”
Her words stopped me cold.
Keeping the Room Quiet
In that moment I saw how I had completely turned something I had prayed over and felt called to do into something about me.
My ego had taken the wheel. The noisy roommate had moved in and started redecorating. It was no longer about the writing, the sharing of stories, and the hope of showing people the importance of self-discovery in alignment with the divine.
“The damn noisy roommate,” I said to myself.
I had read parts of Michael A. Singer’s book “The Untethered Soul” a few months ago and recognized the metaphor immediately. Singer’s book highlights the noisy roommate as the voice that tells us we are not enough, that someone else’s success diminishes ours, that we must protect our territory at all costs. It whispers jealousy, comparison, resentment, and distraction. The noisy roommate wants our full attention on itself and nothing else. And mine was thrashing around like a drunken rockstar in a fourteenth-floor hotel room: loud, obnoxious, and destroying everything in sight.
My wife was right. The work was never meant to be about carving out a unique niche for myself. It’s about pointing people toward the same peace and presence I find on the prairie, in the dogs, and ultimately with God. There are many roads that lead to the same destination, and not everyone has to take the same path. If the work glorifies God, there is room for every honest voice.
Standing there beside the grill I felt the noisy roommate shrink.
I walked over to our retaining wall overlooking our front yard and I prayed, the evening air cooling against my skin as the last light began to settle. I asked God to quiet the voice that wanted everything to be about myself, and to remove the jealousy plaguing me. Peace returned almost immediately, like a weight being lifted rather than pushed away. Before I finished my prayer I wished the influencer success in all he does. The envy dissolved, and gratitude for God’s help took its place.
This experience reminded me of a simple truth I keep relearning. The noisy roommate exists wherever ego is given room to operate unchecked, and it reveals itself most clearly when something meaningful is at stake. It wants to redirect attention inward, to distort perspective, to convince us that comparison is reality and that someone else’s progress is somehow a subtraction from our own. It thrives on misalignment, pulling us away from purpose and toward self-preservation.
When I walk the prairie behind my boys I do not hear the noisy roommate. The wind in the grass, dogs working scent, the vast canvas above, and the living art of dog versus bird make it impossible for the roommate to compete. It’s the place where I can feel my soul, and feel nearest to our Heavenly Father. The roommate knows to stay quiet in those moments.
The challenge, and perhaps the real work of a life oriented toward God, is learning how to carry that same quiet into the rest of our lives, when the noise has more room to take hold.
The work of Chasing the Quiet Pull is not about amassing followers, gathering subscribers, and giving myself a platform. It’s about creating a small corner of the internet where people can remember what it feels like to exhale, to step out of the noise long enough to reconnect with something deeper. It is about sharing honest stories of dogs, experiences, self-discovery, and faith so others might find their own quiet pull toward something greater than themselves. It is about glorifying God through the ordinary and extraordinary moments He places us within.
The noisy roommate’s attempt to make it about me, sow doubt, and compare is far from over. My responsibility is not to eliminate it entirely, but to recognize it quickly, to refuse its influence, and to return my focus where it belongs. One day, one prayer, one honest reflection at a time.
Because when the focus stays on Him, the path forward becomes clearer than any plan I could devise on my own.
And that is the only reason any of this matters.
Keep chasing your quiet pull, and thank God for every day gifted for that pursuit.
God bless,
Abram