We are twelve people on a pontoon made for maybe half that.There are tangled lines everywhere, someone is already crying, and the only quiet thing on Huzzy Lake this Father’s Day is the water itself.
For the past few years, this has been our tradition.
My dad, my brothers, and all our sons meet up at my brother’s place on Huzzy Lake in Lawton, Michigan.
We pile onto his pontoon boat and launch ourselves into a few hours of “fishing” together.
It is loud.
It is messy.
And I hate it.
I don’t hate the people, of course.
I love my dad.
I love my brothers.
I love watching my boys light up when Grandpa gets excited.
But if I were designing my perfect Father’s Day, it would not look like twelve humans and a cooler on aluminum flooring, hooks flying past ears while someone drops a bag of chips into the live well.
If I’m honest, it would look almost like the opposite.
In my head, fishing is supposed to be quiet.
A dock at sunrise.
A small boat with one or two people who understand that silence is a kind of reverence.
You cast.
You wait.
You listen to the birds and the faint whine of the line in the wind.
You think your own thoughts and, every once in a while, you share a few with the person next to you.
That is fishing, as I believe it should be.
And every year, instead, I find myself on the loudest boat on the quietest lake.
So why do I keep saying yes?
Because my dad loves it.
Because my boys love it.
Because, against my preferences, I’m starting to suspect this noisy ritual might be doing something important in me.
This year, my brother showed up wearing a white t‑shirt with black letters across the sleeve: LIVE LOUD.
The shirt looked like something from a Christian clothing line or a conference merch table—the kind of thing meant to encourage you to be bold in your faith, to stand out, to make noise for Jesus.
As I watched my sons cast into the same patch of water for the tenth time, the shirt felt like a caption for our boat.
We were, without question, living loud.
Kids were shouting.
Uncles were telling stories at full volume.
My dad was calling out instructions.
Something was always being spilled or dropped or accidentally hooked.
And yet, at the same time, I couldn’t shake how strange that phrase sounded to me as a Christian.
Live loud.
I’ve sat in church my whole life, and I couldn’t think of a single place in Scripture where we’re called to live loudly.
I could, however, think of several that call us to something very different.
The apostle Paul tells a young church to make it their ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind their own business and work with their hands so that their everyday life would win the respect of outsiders.
He urges believers to pray for those in authority “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.”
Peter writes about the “hidden person of the heart,” the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit that is precious in God’s sight.
Quiet life.
Peaceful and quiet life.
Gentle and quiet spirit.
The more I sat with those words, the stranger “live loud” sounded as a banner for Christian faith.
Of course, those passages aren’t telling us never to speak, never to protest, never to sing loudly or laugh hard or shout for joy.
But they do point toward a particular kind of posture—a way of being in the world that is unhurried, non‑anxious, and deeply rooted.
To “lead a quiet life” is to live free from meddling and constant disruption, to stay busy with the work God has given you instead of being busybodies in everyone else’s business.
It is about a settled, ordinary faithfulness that, over time, wins the respect of those outside the church not because it is flashy, but because it is stable and good.
That vision feels especially important in American Christianity, where faithfulness is often confused with visibility.
We live in a culture that rewards volume—followers, platforms, strong takes, going viral.
It’s not surprising that Christian subculture has often baptized that logic: boldness becomes a brand, and “live loud” turns into a slogan we can sell.
I’m not immune to any of that.
I write.
I teach.
I like ideas and conversations and, yes, sometimes microphones.
But God keeps bringing me back to this quieter call: aspire to live quietly, to be faithful in the small place right in front of you.
And on Father’s Day, that place looked like a pontoon full of people I love, making way more noise than I would ever choose.
Here’s what I’m coming to see:
Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is live quietly on the inside while the world—and the pontoon—are loud on the outside.
I do not control the volume of my extended family.
I cannot make my dad prefer contemplative fly fishing at dawn.
I cannot convince my sons that the “right” way to fish is to whisper and watch the water for hours.
What I can do is choose how I show up.
I can choose to drive to Lawton even when every introverted cell in my body wants a solo morning with a book and a quiet shoreline.
I can choose to untangle lines without sighing.
I can choose to listen to my dad’s stories and my boys’ excited nonsense without constantly calculating how much more peaceful the day could have been if we’d done it my way.
I can choose, in other words, to let my preferences die a little bit for the sake of love.
It is not glamorous.
It does not make for an inspiring t‑shirt.
It is, however, a very quiet kind of obedience.
Philippians talks about considering others more significant than ourselves, looking not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others.
On the boat, that doesn’t look like a profound spiritual moment.
It looks like moving so my nephew has space to fish off the side, or sitting in the hot sun longer than I’d like because my dad is still talking to one of my boys about the best bait for bluegill.
None of that changes the fact that I still don’t enjoy the chaos.
I don’t think I ever will.
But I’m starting to see that sometimes a “quiet life” doesn’t mean a quiet environment.
Sometimes it means a quiet heart in a loud environment—a heart that is not resentful, not sulking, not silently keeping score, but present and willing to love in the noise.
As I’ve thought about this, I’ve started to wonder: where is the loud boat in your life?
Maybe it’s an aging parent who repeats the same stories.
Maybe it’s a church service that is nothing like your ideal.
Maybe it’s a workplace, a neighborhood, a classroom, a family gathering where the volume (literal or metaphorical) is always higher than you’d prefer.
There is a place you keep showing up to, mostly out of love or commitment, where part of you would rather be anywhere else.
What would it look like to receive that place as one of the ways God is teaching you a quiet life?
Not a life of withdrawal or resentment, but a life where your soul learns how to be at rest in Him even when the circumstances are restless.
Later in the morning, after a few hours of noise and sun and snacks, my youngest hooked a bluegill.
The boat erupted.
Everyone shouted.
The pontoon rocked as twelve people leaned toward the same small moment.
My dad grinned like he used to when we were small and he was the one unhooking fish for us.
The lake, somehow, stayed quiet.
The distant shorelines did not care that we had disturbed the air again.
Standing back on shore, watching my boy beam and my dad’s eyes crinkle at the edges, I felt something shift—not in the volume around me, but in the volume inside me.
Somewhere under the surface, in a place too deep for slogans, I sensed a small, stubborn yes.
Not a yes to “living loud,” but a yes to loving well in the noise.
A yes to the quiet work of showing up again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, to the loudest boat on the quietest lake.
And maybe that is one of the ways God is teaching me what a quiet life really means.
