Peace

I am currently in a book group/bible study/accountability group with my closest girlfriends here in Grenada. We don’t really have a name for it so I just call it my “Girls Group”. And, it is just that– Our husbands always seem so surprised when we always go overtime and can’t seem to figure out what we have to talk about for 4+ hours! 🙂 We read a book together, we talk about life together, we laugh and cry and encourage, we pray together and worship God together. The last few months we have been reading Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist. (If you have never read anything by Shauna Niequist, I HIGHLY recommend it!! Cold Tangerines is my favorite so far) I had actually read Cold Tangerines in college with my softball D-group (devotional group). But, it has been really neat to go through it again in such a different place of life. It relates to my life in ways so completely different than the first time I read it and in other ways, quite similarly! Here is an excerpt from her chapter called Shalom…

“There is a way of living, a way of harmonizing and hitting a balance point, a converging of a thousand balance points and voices, layering together, twisting together, and there are moments when it all clicks into place just for a split second- God and marriage and forgiveness and something deep inside that feels like peace- and that’s the place I’m trying to get to…The word I use for it is shalom. It is the physical, sense-oriented, relational, communal, personal, ideological posture that arches God-ward. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s equilibrium and free-fall, balance and shake. It’s a new dance, a new taste, the feeling of falling in love, the knowledge of being set free. It’s that split-second cross between a face and a feeling, something you would swear on in a court of law but couldn’t find words for if you tried. 

To get there, I’m finding, is the hardest work and the most worthwhile fight. Shalom requires so much, so much more than I thought I would have to sacrifice, and it scrapes so deeply through the lowest parts of me, divulging and demonstrating so many dark corners. It’s something you can’t fake, so you have to lay yourself open to it, wide open and vulnerable to what it might ask of you, what it might require you to give up, get over, get outside of, get free from. It feels, sometimes, like running farther than you thought you could run, legs shaking and lungs burning, feeling proud and surprised at what little old you can do…Shalom is about God, and about the voice and spirit of God blowing through and permeating all the dark corners that we’ve chopped off, locked down. It’s about believing, and letting belief move you to forgive. It’s about grace, and letting grace propel you into action. It’s about the whole of our lives becoming woven through with the sacred spirit of God, through friendship and confession, through rest and motion, through marriage and silence.

Shalom is the act of life lifting up and becoming an act of worship and celebration, a sacrament, an offering. It’s about living in a world of movie theaters and shoes and highways and websites, and finding those things  to be shot through with the same spirit and divinity and possibility that we see in ourselves. It’s living with purpose and sacrifice and intention, willing to be held to the highest, narrowest possible standard of goodness, and in the same breath, finding goodness where most people see nothing but dirt.”

Today is our 2 month mark of leaving Grenada. I cannot believe it. It feels like just yesterday, I was packing up my life and moving to a foreign country I knew nothing about. There have been ups and downs, trials and successes, and a lot of growing. And, God has brought so much peace to get us through this time in our first home. As Shauna said, it takes work and a fight to get to a place of shalom and we are definitely in that fight right now. The next 2 months are going to go quick but that is not where our fight ends. There will be a lot of change for us in the next few months, however, at this point it is a lot of unknown change. We leave here not knowing where we will go next. Ashkon will be taking the biggest test of his life this summer. Once we get placed for rotations, we will have a couple weeks to move, maybe somewhere in California, maybe in New York…(at least we know it will be in the US!). Ashkon starts the next process of his medical school to basically figure out what area of medicine he wants to do for the rest of his life. And (surprisingly), we will have to get adjusted back to living in the states. So, how will I be getting through the next few months?? PEACE. I’m not going to lie and say that it has been easy or that it will be, especially for me being a planner. But knowing that God will be guiding us through each step of the way and that His plans are so much greater than ours gives me peace. Seeing how He has been faithful in our time here gives me peace. Knowing that my fight for Shalom will be worthwhile pushes me through each day to trust God with my life. Knowing that it will be difficult and that God is refining me through this process of giving up control gives me peace. Seeing the man that God brought into my life specifically to walk through this journey with me gives me peace. It is a moment by moment fight, and I know that it will all be worth it!

“There is a way of living, a way of harmonizing and hitting a balance point, a converging of a thousand balance points and voices, layering together, twisting together, and there are moments when it all clicks into place just for a split second- God and marriage and forgiveness and something deep inside that feels like peace- and that’s the place I’m trying to get to…”

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” John 14:27