This healing journey has been one big fight for peace. It seems as if once I think I have a handle on one thing then life throws me another curveball that makes me question everything all over again. But I think the problem to my wavering peace is that I actually don’t think I really grasped the concept of true peace.
Deep down my own idea of true peace was getting my questions answered to things in my life that went unanswered, or getting justice for the situations I felt weren’t resolved, and I believed that only then would my mind rest. Of course, that doesn’t happen with everything, and so I just became used to not having total peace with certain situations in my life. So I resorted to the temporary feeling of ‘peace.’ The feeling of tranquility or calmness like when I’m doing something fun and relaxing, or when I’m in a quiet space unbothered by the outside world. Because I figured well if I can’t be at peace mentally, then maybe I can feel at peace. So peace became something that I thought of as a feeling. Something that I needed to physically feel, or a place that I needed to physically be at, in order to be okay.
Now, I’m beginning to see that just feeling peace is not enough. Why? Because the feeling is so fleeting. The feeling comes and goes. The feeling is unreliable. And the whole point of having peace is so that you can always have it, right? But the physical peace that you can get from the world is only temporary. Not saying that those things can’t be peaceful, they’re just not enough.
So what is true peace?
Okay, so I looked into the meaning of biblical peace because this type of peace goes beyond what my definition of peace is. I read that in Hebrew, peace is translated to shalom—which comes with a few definitions—but completeness, wholeness, and soundness are just a few of its meanings. So to be complete or whole would insinuate that there is nothing broken in your life and nothing missing. And this sounds like a beautiful idea of peace, but I can’t say that nothing is broken or missing in my life. In fact, there has been a lot of breaking in my life, and truthfully, what biblical peace is seems to be something that I don’t think I have or can possibly attain at the moment—but I’m actively trying to grasp this concept because I recognize that I need this type of wholeness in my life.
Biblical peace is also not just a feeling, it’s a knowing. This form of peace doesn’t invite you to ignore your brokenness, it invites you to shift your focus on the knowledge that God is the source of true peace in the midst of your brokenness. When you continue to set your mind on this fact and believe in the power of God to heal you and make you whole, then you will eventually experience restoration.
But it’s hard to accept or even see this type of peace come to fruit if you’re just focused on the broken areas in your life, and that has been my problem. Whenever I encounter a trigger that reminds me of a broken place, I go into a usual pattern of trying to figure everything out again, focusing on intently on the issue, but I always come up with nothing—which always leaves me in a state of unrest.
As I said in a previous post, now I’m trying to focus on the power of God to carry me through this journey of healing, because I’m in serious need of rest. The more I focus on it, I’m beginning to see things a little differently—peace being one of those things. God’s power includes the power of lasting peace. A peace that’s beyond my definition of what I thought peace was.
So now I’m learning that true peace is not a feeling, it’s a state of mind. This state of mind is not dependent upon a place, a feeling, or a thing. Having peace means making the decision to continually set my mind on God, the source of peace, in order obtain and keep a state of lasting soundness and wholeness.
This isn’t something that comes overnight. This type of peace is a choice that I will continually need to make until that state of mind becomes second nature. However, this does bring a fresh perspective to my journey because this whole time I’ve been fighting for a feeling instead of a state of mind. Like I also said in a previous post, God’s power is accessible to me, and this includes the power of divine peace. All I have to do is make the decision to focus on that peace daily, and believe that it will, and is, restoring me to emotional wholeness.
Until next time.
P.S. I attached a little song I wrote to serve as a reminder of the authority that I have in choosing to bring peace to my mind and heart even when I don’t feel it.
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