This coming week, our family will remember my husband's beloved, beautiful mother. Tuesday, December 11th will mark the twenty year anniversary of Mom being ripped from our family on an icy Indiana highway exactly two weeks before Christmas. I have been thinking a lot about peace this week in regard to losing her. We did a much better job of grasping peace twenty years ago, fully surrendering to God's will, even the valley of the shadow of death. The truth is, her death was the catalyst that set into motion a twenty year battle of aching hard after aching hard, and the absence of her wisdom, steady presence, and quite frankly, her over-the-top crazy love for us through the soul-hard journey we have walked has left a wound I doubt will ever fully heal. Death and grief are tricky beasts to manage, and compounded grief is an even more complicated mystery. We go on because we have to. What choice is there? But there is a big difference between moving forward in obligation, and moving forward in thriving life and living. Peace can permeate in the midst of both.
"Because of God's tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace." (Luke 1:78-79 NLT)
Light in the darkness... Light that will be a guide to the path of peace. Peace about the big things is sometimes easier than experiencing peace in the daily grit of life. We have less control over the big things, and oddly, they can sometimes be easier to surrender. Peace in the dailies that we have much more opportunity to humanly muck up can be tough. My hope for us all is to sense the tangible presence of God with us right here, right now in the midst of the ins and outs, no-matter-what grace, and to experience His peace right along with it. Somehow. Some way. PEACE. There are blushes of it here and there, but peace for me is usually a bit of a roller-coaster. I try to breathe deep. Pray a whole lot. Read as much as I can. Talk it through with those who are a part of my inner world. In my broken-best, peace. Surrender, trust, and hope, no matter how fragile they are, bring a measure of it, and it is that measure I hang on to as I wait, and keep waiting. There will never be pat answers from me here in this space, but another humble soul hammering out her faith journey, perhaps a little too loudly for some, but shouting so others that feel alone know they are not. Life is not a tidy package all wrapped up in a neat little bow. Some would have you think that, but it isn't. It's a humble, glorious, broken, pain-filled, joy-filled, honest, breathtakingly beautiful mess. Peace, dear ones. Jesus came when the world needed it most. Hope in a manger and hope in my heart...and yours. Doesn't that hope bring a little peace along with it, even if there are no answers for our hardest things? Right here believing with you. Hope. Peace. Advent waiting. Trusting, and honoring the best that I can.
Always grace...always,
Shanda
