A Peace that Remains
BY : RACHEL JOSEPH
Peace is a tricky word to unpack. It can be an even trickier place to live from.
Sometimes it’s because we’ve never truly known it. More often, it’s because culture’s version of it fails to match up to something deep within us that desires the truest form of it. And then, maybe it’s both.
Maybe we once knew peace, but in the tumultuous tides of life in a world that can be less than kind, we have forgotten it. Maybe it was left behind in the past and we’ve not yet figured out how to usher it into our present. I use that word “usher” intentionally. I’ve learned that peace can simultaneously be something bestowed upon us and stewarded within us – both, and.
I think about peace a lot, because for so long it’s been something that seems to oscillate so rapidly in my life of motherhood and marriage and business ownership and ministry and more. The moment I begin to tap into that other-earthly experience is often the same moment I feel it slipping like sand out of my grasp, my eyes distracted by wind and waves and things both inside and outside of my own control.
In a particularly difficult season of life for my family, I was grasping at the air, nearly flailing, in an attempt to bring peace back through our circumstances. My husband had lost his job in full- time ministry just three weeks after I had given birth to our second child, and I thought, “if we can just fix this, we’ll come back to peace.” Find him the job, step into a new church community, pick up the pieces and carry on…but as time passed and the pieces came back together, peace, resilient peace, was still the furthest thing from my heart and mind.
But, then.
I prayed – a lot. I listened even more. I payed attention to the things that were causing unrest in my spirit and therefore in my body. As an embodied being, I quickly came to terms with the fact that my internal thought-life, choices, habits, and even hurts were a direct thread to my experience of day-to-day living.
Unforgiveness made me quick to assume the worst in people I interacted with daily.
Pursuing entertainment over intimacy with God and others lead to apathy and disengagement.
Comparison in all of its gruesome forms made me blind to the unique gifts and calling that are embedded deep within me.
The list goes on and on.
Yet, somewhere along this journey of unpacking all that was counter to the life of peace I craved, peace was ushered in. And not just in a slow, trickling way, but in a real gush of Presence like waves of water washing over me, carrying me and enveloping me.
I still had moments of outburst and near grown-up sized tantrums. I still had moments where I failed to acknowledge the very peace that was tethering me to truth. But over the course of another year or so, those moments became the exception and no longer the norm.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt grounded. I felt steady, like the slightest breeze wouldn’t topple me over. The peace in me became more resilient. I became stronger by becoming more surrendered. I became steadier by loosening my white-knuckled grip on the areas of my life that for so long I had been desperate to control. I had a new kind of peace that wasn’t fazed by whether I was getting great sleep or terrible sleep, whether my kids were in good moods or bad moods, whether I’d kept up on the household chores or not, whether I’d met my business goals or fallen short.
Mind you, I’m not perfect, so I definitely don’t always respond with absolute grace to the chaos that inevitably arises in life. But through this long sojourn of inventory and surrender, I have finally found that peace isn’t the absence of chaos, it’s the anchor in the midst of it. And some days, let’s be honest, it’s a sheer lifeline.
On the days where I feel peace the least, I am still at peace – it’s a paradox, isn’t it? To, at any given moment, feel flustered, overwhelmed, over-worked, or burdened, yet at the end of the day to still be at peace. This kind of peace is deeper than my circumstance, deeper than the wind that blows around me. It’s resolute. It’s constant. It’s a Presence, not a feeling.
Culture tells you peace will come and go – that it’s out of our control – but it’s not true. We can receive peace, and we can also pursue peace. We can do the hard, gritty work of safe-guarding our hearts, setting boundaries as needed, and surrendering all that weighs us down and makes us drag our feet through life.
Maybe your own unrest, or even war, is beckoning you to begin a similar journey to my own. And maybe that feels daunting and impossible. But maybe, just maybe, underlying the fear and anxiety is a tiny glimmer of hope meant to be watered and grown and pruned so that your life can bear the fruit of peace once again.
Be encouraged, because on the other side of all the excavation and hard work is unwavering peace – rooted deep, transforming from the depths, and defying circumstance. It’s a Peace that remains.
