Seek the quiet places

For 5 months now I've been living in intentional community, where people dont just live together but they really spend time together and ask how people are going and expect an honest answer, where they help eachother out by doing laundry or putting clothes away, little things that make a lot of difference. Right now there are 6 girls sharing a bathroom thats about 2 metres long and wide. And I love it. But I have become so used to this that I dont really know how to be alone and be in the quiet... I only realised this when I moved out of my own room and into a room with Courtney and the next morning we both said that we slept so much better when someone else was there.... or when its my day off and there is no one around and I just dont know how to entertain myself!
And while community and being together is beautiful, I know that I need to be able to be by myself, so I went for a walk in the woods to this little tiny chapel I love and sat in there for a while to pray and to be alone. I didnt like it at first, it was so quiet and I didnt know what to do with that. But after 20 mins or so I felt my heart become more still and be able to rest in that silence.... And I realised that all through history God has been calling His children away to the quiet places to be alone with them. The world is noisy and often we dont hear but when we do and we leave to those places of silence and solitude, it's there that we hear Him speak and see His face more than ever.
God called Moses away to the mountains for weeks at a time, David to the lonely fields with the sheep, Esther to the spacious palace rooms, Gomer out into the wilderness, along with John the baptist and Elisha. He met with Jesus in the hills to pray and with Zechariah in the silence of the temple sanctuary, Gideon in the depths of a wine press... Almost every time that God wanted to speak to His childrem, to tell them something important that He was going to do or that He wanted them to be a part of....He told them in the silence, when they were alone.
And now I have to look at my own life... I want so much to understand God's plan, to know what he is doing, to hear His voice... Yet the silence is something I shy away from, I dont like being there. But I cant help but think that hearing from God and seeking those places of silence and solitude regularly go hand in hand.