Striving for Peace

"When we see that God has been with us all along, guiding our steps and directing our paths, we come to more fully trust Him and turn our attention to find Him more quickly in each new phase life brings." 

~ P. Schrier "Anointed, Transformed, Redeemed"

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The sun is shining today and if I look out the South West window from my vantage point on the second floor, turn my head awkwardly to the right and lean to the left as far as I can, I see the mountains in the distance. Well, sort of; it's definitely a stretch on many levels.   The older two boys are at school and the younger two are (supposedly) having a quiet time.  This is definitely a moment meant to be enjoyed for its peacefulness.  

A moment of peace in Fish Creek Park (October)

Undoubtedly, I don't take it for granted.  

I find myself somehow in the middle of a new season of my life and, in many ways, can't comprehend how life could be so different from what it once was a year ago (and the year before that).  

Despite all of the settling in we've been so active at pursuing, I am still feeling a sense of being in transition.  My heart strings are definitively attached to a community more than eight hours to the North and yet my weekly schedule is falling into place in a small community in the South East of Calgary.  I am so thankful to be meeting wonderful new friends but I am crestfallen when my thoughts inevitably (and frequently) fall back to family. It is, at many times, a most lonely kind of a feeling.  I find it a struggle to catch up with my email as I begin to think about geography, so I frequently avoid it (only to find that my procrastinating leads to an intimidatingly full inbox as I had no idea how many advertisers and the like have my contact information).  It is a challenge to go online.  

In this, I am trying to sort out my feelings.  My gratefulness is complete in so many ways for what God has done in my life.  To benchmark where I am in health in comparison to last year is astounding.  I am in awe of all He has done - the healing that has been gifted to me.  In my Beth Moore 'Anointed' study this week, we personalized Psalm 30.  It was anything but a stretch for me.  My current health being what it is, there are times where I cannot conceive where I once was in my illness.  The depths of that time are now, for the most part, only a shadow in my memories.  I have been blessed immeasurably more than I could've ever imagined; yet there is a human part of me that seems to be longing for even more.  Perhaps this is in reaction to what I feel has been lost along the way.

Dealing with loss is a challenging prospect.  

In this vein, I attended a workshop of sorts on Striving for Peace.  I greatly appreciated the content of the powerpoint and felt as though the presenter - a recently graduated doctor of clinical psychology - adequately and thoroughly explored the topic.  Understandably, the main point of the workshop was to evaluate the causes of negative stress; which was defined as: "[situations where] the expectations placed on you are greater than what you think your ability is to deal with them".

In the evaluation of this kind of stress, three factors were presented:

1.  Different stressors [which lead to]

2.  Responses [in particular, our thinking patterns]

3.  Coping styles [encouragingly, we were given several different techniques to cope with stress in an accurate and positive way].

For the most part, the presenter spoke clearly to my experiences.  In one area, however, I have to say that it was evident that her applied experiences with stress did not mesh with her academic understanding of the topic.  It certainly isn't a critique; unless you've been in the trenches of certain types of stress, it's impossible to really understand what that experience is like. The area which illustrated this was in her perception of the events which cause us stress (i.e. the different stressors which lead to our responses and then to our coping styles).  

Many of the events that cause negative stress can be less stressful if we temper our responses to them.  However, some events are just inherently (and unavoidably) stressful.  I will give an example from personal experience.  Last weekend I decided to go and get groceries with the kids.  I thought it would be a good experience for the older two boys and that the younger two would benefit from the outing, too.  To be honest, and especially in retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking. 

As I needed other household items, I went to one of the larger stores here in Calgary.  Unfortunately, it was one of the stores that has carts which only seat one child at a time.  This is doubly unfortunate when both older brothers want to push, but one seated child refuses to be pushed by anyone but mom.  Nevertheless and miraculously, we somehow make it through the store, able to check off almost everything on the list, and get through to the checkout (me, undeniably sweating and frazzled) in one haphazard motley piece.  With the older two tossing items onto the belt (oh, the poor bread), the youngest trying to climb out of his cart into his brother's, the middle child wanting to push every button on the credit card machine, and a line-up forming behind me, the pressure was on.  It got to the unbearable range when I reached for my credit card and could not find it.  

There are no words.

As I am on the verge of melt-down looking for said tiny piece of plastic, praying for rescue, my eldest is distractedly walking towards those wonderful coin-operated-devices at the front of the store, my toddler is throwing his Thomas toothpaste onto the floor (and crying for it back), the youngest is still trying to climb out in escape and the second born (the spirited one) is vying for candy.  And I still haven't found my credit card. 

This is negative stress.

No matter what thought process or coping technique I pair with it, moments of my life such as this one make me fully aware that the expectations placed on me are greater than my ability to deal with them. Period.

I was more than a little thankful to find that credit card seconds later (though it felt like an eternity) tucked into a little book in my pocket (I had put it in my pocket to make it faster at the check out - ha!), fully aware that it was God's grace (and a lot of prior training in patience) that I didn't lose it in full scale melt down mode at the check out line.  

My life is messy and I will be in a continual pursuit of striving for Peace.  I am thankful I don't have to seek it on my own.  I am thankful that when negative stress occurs (and it will... and from experience, I understand that it will happen daily), I can use techniques such as reframing thoughts and reformulating; but more than anything, I am thankful that I can take the experiences that have challenged me and stretched me in ways that I never would've imagined and know that God is going to carry me through the ones I am facing today and tomorrow.  

In the study I mentioned above, Priscilla Schrier said this:

"God seems to specialize in putting us in positions where we must rely on His work in us. I'm learning that when God wants to show Himself in living color, He works through us. He purposefully puts us in a place where we will have to depend on Him to accomplish the task at hand, therefore seeing His greatness and turning our worship more fully toward Himself."

It is a good thing to know.  Because life - and perhaps especially life with four young boys - can be significantly messy and stressful.  Perhaps there is no better way to reframe thoughts or reformulate a situation than that in knowing that there is purpose in the challenges, stress and messes of daily life.  

Meaningfulness in the perfectly imperfect; this is a kind of peace I can confidently journey towards.  

Same kid as the photo above at the lake in September (a perfectly messy moment)