The Beauty of Empty Spaces

Dear Fellow Pilgrim,

I have been taking a graphic design course these past couple of weeks.

One of those courses that promises, if you work diligently enough, that in three or four months you can earn a certificate and begin calling yourself a graphic designer. Will I know everything there is to know about design by then? Certainly not. But I am grateful we live in a world where it is possible to pivot, to learn something new, and even to begin a new vocation without having to start life over. At forty, with two little ones whose voices fill my days from sunrise to bedtime, returning to college is simply not possible right now. A course? A course feels like grace.

I’ve always admired graphic design from a distance. Secretly, I believed beautiful things belonged to other people—the naturally artistic ones, the ones who could sketch effortlessly, who somehow possessed the eye. I had convinced myself I wasn’t one of them.

Then something unexpected happened. I discovered that beauty was not as foreign to me as I had imagined. I may not draw like the great artists, but I know beauty when I see it. More than that—I long for it. Beauty has always drawn my heart toward God, even before I understood why. And somewhere between color theory, typography, and composition, I realized perhaps I had been making beautiful things all along in different ways. I simply hadn’t called it art.

Lately I’ve been learning about the principles that help make a design beautiful: alignment, hierarchy, contrast, repetition, balance, unity, color, proximity—and something with a curious name: negative space. If you’ve ever admired a well-designed website or a photograph that somehow feels peaceful without knowing why, you’ve already experienced it. Designers intentionally leave parts of the composition empty. They resist the urge to fill every corner. Those quiet places keep the page from feeling crowded. They guide your eyes gently instead of demanding your attention all at once.

As one of my course lessons described it, negative space “cushions and gives lightness to your composition… providing room for elements to breathe.” Room to breathe. I couldn’t stop thinking about those words. A few days later I was showing Valerie the beginnings of the website we’re creating together. It is still very much unfinished—there is plenty I hope to improve—but for the first time I had intentionally applied some of these principles. The page looked… balanced. Not because I had added more. Because I had left more out.

And almost as quickly as that realization settled into my mind, another one quietly followed. Perhaps life works the same way. We spend so much of our lives trying to fill every empty place. Every hour scheduled. Every evening committed. Every dollar spoken for. Every silence interrupted. Every moment productive. We speak often about wanting balance, yet our instinct is almost always to achieve it by adding rather than subtracting. But balance isn’t created by filling every inch of the page. It is created by leaving room. A life crowded with commitments leaves little space for delight. A life consumed by ambition leaves little room for friendships. A calendar packed from morning until night leaves little room for rest. A budget overflowing with our wants leaves little room for generosity. A mind overflowing with worry leaves little room to hear the still, small voice of God. Even our spiritual lives can become cluttered when we mistake constant activity for communion. We busy ourselves doing things for God while quietly neglecting to simply be with Him. Perhaps it is sometimes about leaving too little room. Not merely room in our homes. Room in our hearts.

I think this may be why clutter in my own home affects me more than I would like to admit. When every surface is covered, when toys spill into walkways and dishes crowd the counters, it isn’t only the house that feels disordered. My soul does too. It feels as though there is nowhere to rest my eyes. Nowhere to breathe. And perhaps that is precisely what clutter steals. Space.

The Fathers often speak of stillness—not merely the absence of noise, but the quieting of the heart before God. They call it hesychia. It is not idleness. It is not laziness. It is the spaciousness in which the soul remembers how to listen. Our Lord Himself continually withdrew to lonely places to pray. Before great miracles. After long days. Before the Cross. Again and again He stepped away from the crowds—not because His work lacked importance, but because communion with the Father was never meant to be crowded out by even the holiest activity.

Even creation itself bears this rhythm. Day and night. Work and Sabbath. Speech and silence. Feasting and fasting. The Christian life has never been one of constant fullness. It is a life of holy rhythm. A life with breathing room. And perhaps this is why beauty feels so peaceful. Not because it is filled with many things. But because every element has room to become what it was meant to be. Maybe our souls are designed that way too. Maybe we become more beautiful not by adding one more project, one more commitment, one more distraction—but by allowing God to clear away what keeps us from seeing Him. By leaving room for prayer. For laughter. For lingering at the dinner table. For walking without headphones. For watching our children without simultaneously planning tomorrow. For silence. For wonder. For love.

Negative space, it turns out, is not empty at all. It is the place where beauty breathes. Seek those empty places, dear friend. Not because they accomplish more. Not because they make you more productive. But because they remind us that we were never created to live crowded lives. The Artist who fashioned galaxies also painted silence between the stars. Perhaps He knew that beauty has always needed room to breathe.

And perhaps our souls do too.