🧠 “Mom, Can You Hear Yourself Think?” — A Backseat Brain-Buster with a Heavenly Lesson

We were just driving along, windows cracked, sun shining, not a care in the world… when Lucy hit me with a question that stopped me in my mental tracks:

“Mom, can you hear yourself think?”

Excuse me, what?

I had to pause and replay the question in my own mind (ironically) before I responded.

Have I ever actually thought about… well, how I think?

After a second, I said, “Well… I don’t hear my thoughts with my ears, but I do hear them—in my head.”

She blinked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Fair. 😂

So I gave her a little thought experiment:

“Close your eyes and think about that Mackinac Island ice cream you had. Picture it. Taste it. Can you hear yourself describing the flavors?”

She shut her eyes tight, got quiet for a moment, then smiled and said, “I can! But it’s not with my ears—it’s in my mind! That’s so weird!”

And just like that, her little brain had cracked open a whole new layer of understanding.

We kept the conversation going and talked about all the different ways we can hear—not just with our ears, but with our hearts and even our bodies.

I told her sometimes our bodies give us signals—like when our tummy flips if something feels off, or when we feel a sense of peace deep inside when something is right.

And then we talked about the most beautiful kind of hearing:

How God speaks.

We don’t hear Him with our ears—not usually, anyway.

We hear Him through nudges in our spirit.

Through peace that doesn’t make sense.

Through reminders that show up at just the right time.

We hear Him with our hearts.

That backseat question turned into one of the most meaningful conversations of the week.

All from one simple but profound moment.

And it’s just another reason I’ll never stop being in awe of what happens when we pause long enough to hear what’s really being said.