Follow Peace

I followed peace home to our home sweet home after three long weeks of travel.

Life on the road with two preschoolers is like controlled chaos, and as carefully as we plan and as hard as I try to maintain routine on the go, there just isn’t much peace till we get home again. The kids enjoy the extra time with Dad and the different houses, hotel rooms, airplanes, car rides, and TONS of iPad time.

For about a week.

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And after a week, none of it really matters. We’re all just in survival mode until we can get home and into routine again. In fact, it’s not really the place, but the familiarity and the routine. There is inner peace for both kids and I (and therefore for Tyler), when we are home.

This is a really difficult realization for me.  Because I also thrive on involvement, purpose, and social life.  And since I’m a business partner in our consulting work and start up– not just a spouse to someone who works–I often feel ripped to shreds over holding my own in our business and in maintaining peace for our family.  And what’s harder is that these days I can’t have both.

Do you ever feel torn between competing responsibilities or desires? Maybe you have a call to both your studies and your children, for work travel and older parents, or like my in-laws in Houston, a job to work, a mandatory surgery, and you’re still picking up the pieces from a national disaster that left your home and your treasures in ruins.

Our society tells us you can have it all.  You can do it all. You can find the right “balance” (or at least the right supplements) in order to make space for what you really want. The lie that we breathe in with all of this thinking is that we have control of our life. 

Well, I don’t want to be Debbie Downer over here, but it’s just not true.  Sure, a lot of times, “Life is what you make of it”. But the truth is, when comes down to it, there are seasons when we find ourselves having to choose between two things we really want. And in the very nature of choosing, we can’t have them both.

Even if I had all the money to pay for assistants, designers, copywriters, social media experts, nannies, and (heck, yeah!) my own airplane, there is still only so much of me to invest.  Because I, Rebecca, have been designed as a limited resource.

God made me in such a way that I must sometimes choose what to pour myself into. And when I can accept that He made me this way (and therefore I am not failing when I have to say no or miss out) then there is peace.

“You will keep him in perfect peace,

whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yahweh, the Lord, is everlasting strength.”

(Isaiah 26:3)

In fact, I discovered this morning that the Bible has a lot to say about peace. We need peace. In coming to change the trajectory of our eternity Jesus brought and offers peace.  Blessed are those who make peace.  He keeps us in perfect peace when our mind is stayed on Him, because we trust in Him.

When we came home 3 days ago and I woke up in my own bed to piles of dirty clothes, moldy food, and a yard full of fallen, smelly, horse apples, I was overcome with peace. I will miss out on friends and work in the next week while Tyler travels. I’ll hear about all the cool stuff I’m missing from all of the wonderful people. But I won’t regret keeping the kids and I home to eat, sleep, go to school, pay bills, schedule meetings, and blog in a consistent routine.

Because making choices is about following peace.

It’s not always easy. But when we live within our limits, and keep our mind on Christ, He plants peace in us like deep waters.  Deep waters that will never run dry and we will always be coming back to find that peace.

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