Quiet Fruit

On hidden growth and the slow formation of love, joy, and peace.

Not All Growth Is Visible

I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. About how, even though I know it’s true intellectually, I still feel deeply oriented toward a results-driven mindset.

We live in a world obsessed with productivity—so much so that many of us don’t really know how to rest anymore. But that’s another conversation for another day.

The inner life is easy to overlook because it’s difficult to measure. And when something can’t be measured, there’s this subtle assumption that it somehow doesn’t count.

Like when I forget to wear my watch or activate the fitness app before a walk, and suddenly I feel irrationally disappointed because if it wasn’t recorded, did it even happen?

Ridiculous, right?

And yet, I think we often approach spiritual growth the same way.

The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace—forms quietly. It is evidence that growth is happening, but it rarely develops in ways that can be quantified or controlled.

Most of the deepest work God does in us is hidden at first.

And maybe that’s part of what makes it holy.

Love

I used to think about love primarily as an action, but lately I’ve been thinking about it more as an orientation of the heart.

I’m not sure when that shift happened, but as I’ve sat with it, I’ve noticed there’s far less pressure to perform or produce.

Strange how lingering over a single word can begin to reshape the motivations underneath everything else.

Thinking about love this way reminds me that I haven’t “arrived”—or conversely, somehow failed because I haven’t mastered it yet. I’m still being formed. Still learning how to live open toward God and others.

Because love, before it can ever be expressed, has to first be received.

Always in that order.

Receiving the love of God, surrendering to it, allowing it to re-form us—this is what enables us, through the Spirit of God within us, to extend love toward others in return.

It’s less “look and learn” and more “experience and reproduce.”

And that feels very different from trying to manufacture loving behavior through effort alone.

As I reflect on this in my own life, I’m noticing that love is less about mastering a prescribed set of actions and more about becoming the kind of person who lives from openness instead of defensiveness.

Because love is nuanced.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is say no when someone desperately wants us to say yes.

Sometimes love looks like honesty.
Sometimes restraint.
Sometimes tenderness.
Sometimes boundaries.

And maybe growth looks less like perfection and more like subtle shifts:
less reactivity,
more openness,
a softer heart,
a slower offense.

Quiet fruit.
But fruit nonetheless.

Joy

I’ve always belonged to the “choose joy” club—and honestly, I still do—because I think there’s something deeply formative about intentionally turning ourselves toward hope.

But even here, I feel my understanding shifting.

At one point, I think I treated joy almost like a possession. Something stable and polished I could attain and hold onto if I were spiritually mature enough.

And yes, joy is produced by the Holy Spirit in us.
But not quite in the way I once imagined.

Because fruit isn’t really something we clutch.

Fruit grows naturally from a life being rooted, nourished, and transformed.

Joy, at least as I’m experiencing it now, feels less like emotional brightness and more like an underlying steadiness. A resilient undercurrent that can coexist with grief, fatigue, disappointment, and uncertainty.

It doesn’t erase sorrow.
It walks with us through it.

And I’m beginning to notice how joy changes the way I see things.
How it softens my vision.
How it reorients my attention toward goodness, even in hard places.

And strangely enough, joy often opens the way for peace.

Not linearly.
Not formulaically.
But relationally.

Peace

Peace is definitely not static. At least not on this side of eternity.

We long for peace to arrive externally—through resolved circumstances, calm environments, fixed outcomes. And honestly, who wouldn’t want that?

But the peace of God seems to work differently.

It is an inner steadiness that refuses to anchor itself entirely to circumstantial calm.

A settledness that interrupts anxiety’s loud voice.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to cultivate peace as though it were a destination I could eventually conquer. And the harder I tried to master it, the more failure I felt whenever anxiety resurfaced.

Because peace often feels fragile.
Sometimes elusive.

And for a long time, anxiety became the metric I used to measure spiritual failure.

But lately, curiosity has been changing the way I see it.

I’m beginning to wonder if anxiety is less a sign of unfaithfulness and more an invitation into deeper trust.

And when I trust the Lord, peace returns.

Not always instantly.
Not always permanently.
But faithfully.

The fruit of peace is formed through intimacy with God in communion. So rather than measuring peace by its constant presence, I’m beginning to notice how faithfully it returns.

And maybe that is growth, too.

Not the loud, visible kind.
But the deep kind.
The enduring kind.

I’m beginning to realize that hidden growth is difficult to honor in a culture that rewards visible results.

Lately, I’ve been realizing how much of my drive to “get it right” is actually rooted in anxiety.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to believe that if I could just perform well enough, say the right thing, respond the right way, keep everything together—then maybe everything would feel okay.

And I think that mindset has made it easy to miss quieter forms of growth in my life.

Because when growth is measured by perfection, visible progress, or outward success, we overlook the slow formation of roots that are actually holding us steady.

We have been well-trained to look for what is obvious, expressive, or impressive. But these forms of fruit are easy to dismiss because they develop quietly.

I once worked for a doctor who helped reframe this for me. She had high standards and expected excellence, but she also understood that growth happens progressively. She wasn’t undone by an unfinished to-do list the way I often was. She celebrated what had been accomplished first, and then calmly addressed what still needed attention.

It was a subtle shift, but it changed something in me.

Noticing quiet transformation strengthens our ability to stay anchored.

It reminds us that growth is still happening, even when it feels slow or unseen. And it keeps drawing us back to the place where healing and wholeness are actually formed—in intimacy with God.

These fruits shape how we carry our lives, not just how we act.

Because love, joy, and peace aren’t merely responses we perform when circumstances are good and right. They become the inner scaffolding of a life being formed by God.

That kind of growth is harder to see.

You can fake politeness for a moment.
You can manufacture composure temporarily.
You can curate an outward image of spiritual maturity.

But life has a way of applying pressure.

And pressure exposes what’s actually rooted beneath the surface.

The truth is, we cannot see the depth or strength of roots while they are growing. Roots form quietly, underground, hidden from applause and observation. Yet they become foundational to everything else that eventually blooms above the surface.

A tree does not survive storms because of what is visible. It survives because of what has been formed unseen.

I’m reminded of the massive oak trees along the coast in South Carolina. They look strong and immovable, but locals say their shallow roots make them vulnerable during hurricane storms.

Appearance alone doesn’t determine strength.

Maybe the same is true of us.

Perhaps the real work of spiritual formation is less about becoming impressive or perfect, and more about becoming deeply rooted—so that love remains when people are difficult, joy persists when life is disappointing, and peace returns even when anxiety tries to pull us apart.

That kind of growth may not always be visible at first.
But it is the kind that endures.

I wonder how much of spiritual formation is missed simply because we are looking for blooms while God is tending roots.

Wanting visible progress.
Wanting certainty.
Wanting proof that something is happening.

Meanwhile, beneath the surface, love is softening us.
Joy is steadying us.
Peace is teaching us how to return again and again to the presence of God.

And maybe this is what a life of praise actually looks like.

Not constant emotional intensity or polished spirituality, but a life slowly being aligned with the heart of God.

A life that keeps returning.
Keeps surrendering.
Keeps becoming rooted in love, joy, and peace.

Because praise is more than something we express with our mouths. It is something we embody with our lives.

And perhaps the quiet formation happening beneath the surface is its own kind of worship too.

Quiet work.
Hidden work.
Holy work.

So maybe the invitation is not to strive harder, but to notice more deeply.

To become curious about what is being formed underneath the surface of our ordinary lives.

Because the deepest work of God in us is often the least visible—
and still, somehow,
the most enduring.

Until next time,

Maureen