Peace

This is my fifteenth year picking words. Each year, starting in 2011, I pick two words that so far have started with the same letter. Then, in the seventh year, my words are always joy and jubilee, as the seventh year becomes a sabbath of sorts. I have had two rounds of this cycle: 28 words total at the end of 2024, with two sets of joy and jubilee. This year, then, was the beginning of a new set — and it began with a bang. In January my fiancé and I bought a house together. I also left my job in refugee housing that month, and in February I started a new job at the Community Center of my church. In May we got married, and simultaneously I became a step-mom to an 8 and a 4-year-old, while also moving into our house. I came back from my honeymoon and launched into a completely new season of life: new husband, new house, new kids, new job, and now, a new puppy (Dobby Dietrich, AKA The Dobster). Everything converged in one year, and the last word I would use for it all is peaceful. 

I did not find this year easy. I don’t like beginnings; I like middles. I like when systems are running smoothly and I have context for my days and I’ve grown into my roles while still being challenged by them. I don’t like being bored, but I hate being overstimulated — and this year was overstimulating. I know that the year you get married is supposed to be one of the best of your life, but I’m here to say that for those of us who struggle with change it’s not all that wonderful. My pastor likes to call it “everything’s great and I’m miserable” syndrome, and I have that syndrome in spades. I wish I didn’t. I wish I was more adaptable and quick to learn and grow and change, but I’m slow, and I need a lot of time to settle into new things. Looking back on this year, it makes sense why I’m exhausted. I think this is why my first word this year was peace. I am an anxious person, always looking for things to fix and perfect, and never feeling happy with how things are. Peace cuts against my nature; it is a winter day in Finland to my Sahara desert. It does not make sense to me, and I cannot conjure it up on my own no matter how hard I try.  I am frantic and concerned, peace is relaxed and flexible. I function on ideals and big dreams and grand plans; peace functions on smallness, presence, and open hands. I want peace, but I have always known it would need to come from outside of me, and not from my own heart and mind. 

There is one idea that has stood out to me this year, though, and has led me to peace when I contemplate it and embrace it. I was talking it over with my spiritual director the other day, trying to make sense of my whirling mind, and something stumbled out of my mouth that I didn’t have time to filter. “I don’t think I believe in big things anymore,” I told him. “I don’t think I believe in fixing things…I think that all died when I watched people trying to do good and only making things worse. I think the only thing I believe in anymore is the power of Christ to change us internally, so that we can maybe change things outside of us over time.” I looked at him and paused, and bit my lip, because if this is what I believe, then my center of gravity has shifted to a completely different place. What I used to believe was that I could use Jesus to fix the world; that the world could be fully fixed, and that big things needed to be done to make that happen. I believed in crusades; I believed in making a fuss. It feels like a betrayal to say I don’t believe in those things anymore, but it’s true: I don’t. 

What I believe in now is smallness. I believe in candles that light our footsteps. I believe in digging deep to figure out where the problems are in ourselves before we point fingers at others. I believe that the problem is not a politician, the problem is me; the problem is us. I believe that what we all need is a deep move of the Spirit of God that will work healing in our hearts and our minds from all the pain we’ve seen, and all the pain we’ve inflicted. I don’t believe this just at an individual level — I believe this for us communally, that the gentle web we’ve woven to connect ourselves is changed when even a few of us allow transformation to take root in our souls. And I believe that when we try to do massive, big, good things, our pain and flaws are amplified. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dream, but I do think it means we need to accept bigger things only when our souls (and not our egos) have room to hold them. 

This is peace: that things will fall apart, and there in the rubble is Christ. Things will be confusing and messy and broken, and there in the pain is Christ. That there will be beautiful things, and they will usually be small and mundane, and in the midst of the wonder is Christ. To know Christ, and hopefully to become more like Christ, is the only thing that will soothe our weary hearts. He is the only bringer of peace — even justice itself becomes an idol when placed above Christ. And in this realization, I am also beginning to embrace what I believe is my true calling. I thought my calling was about justice and rightness, about ordering the world outside of myself to reflect the Kingdom. But I think my true calling is to allow Christ to set up a home in my own mind, in my heart and soul and body. I know now that you can do big things in the world and still not have peace in your heart. And I know that the only way forward, the only way to calm the chaos of a broken world, is to allow Christ to create a sanctuary in yourself, to allow him to sow joy and peace and love, so that we can eventually reflect those things back into the pain we see outside of ourselves. Only in this small place, a place that we alone have the power to let him into, does the world change. Only here do I discover true peace.