You Don't Want Peace. You Want Relief.

What if the reason you keep feeling stuck isn't because you lack peace—but because you've been chasing relief instead?

In this episode, we're unpacking the difference between temporary relief and the lasting peace that only Christ produces. We'll talk about why we reach for quick fixes when life feels overwhelming, the difference between rest and escape, and why God often uses discomfort to reveal, heal, and transform us.

If you've ever found yourself wanting to "take the edge off," this episode will challenge you to stop settling for relief and start pursuing the Prince of Peace.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife podcast. This is Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and we do Marriage God's way here. And this is probably going to be the episode that offends you the most. So if you don't mind, stick around. I I hope that you stick around because I and this is it. I don't think most wives actually want peace. I think they want relief. And they're not the same thing. Because in all the years where I had three kids under three, right? So I totally understood. Like I just want a relief. And so essentially over the years, I trained myself to just want that relief, right? And it looked like in the form of escaping, whether that was through scrolling or numbing or getting out of the house or whatever it was. But the problem is I always came back and that peace didn't last. It was just temporary relief. And relief says, make this feeling stop. But peace says, Jesus, rule in the middle of this feeling. And there's that's the huge difference. Because relief is immediate, it's focused on the symptoms, it's an emotional escape, it takes the edge off, it avoids discomfort. It's a quick fix, and it's temporary. But peace, on the other hand, this is fruit of the spirit we're talking about. This is produced through abiding. You have to be connected to the vine in order to receive the ability to produce that fruit, right? Or have that fruit produced in you by the Holy Spirit. And here's the thing: it doesn't always change the circumstances. Very rarely does it change the circumstance, but it what it does is it anchors you in truth and it transforms you instead of simply calming you. And relief isn't wrong, right? Like thinking about it's uh like super hot right now, right? We're having like a heat wave um across the Midwest. And so relief, we can understand relief, right? It's being outside and sweating and walking in and feeling the AC immediately, or being hot and sweaty and jumping into a cold pool, or you know, being so thirsty and taking that drink of like ice cold water, right? We all desire relief, and relief isn't wrong. Jesus understands suffering, and the problem isn't wanting relief, the problem is making relief the goal instead of holiness. And this is why we get to where we are in marriages because everyone wants relief and they don't actually want holiness because holiness, fire applied, is required. So sometimes God does relieve, but more often than not, he actually prunes and he heals by walking us through the fire instead of around it. And some of the reasons that wives are chased chasing relief today, well, first and foremost is because discomfort feels threat. This is how our brains are wired, right? We we would prefer to stay with the discomfort we know than to go into the unknown discomfort that we aren't familiar with. Um, we don't like things like sitting in grief or feeling the uncomfortable emotions of disappointment or rejection or loneliness, resentment, fear, overwhelm, overstimulation, anxiety, conviction, or silence. And so what we do is we medicate what God wants to reveal. And so that's why we reach for those easy things, those counterfeits of shopping and scrolling and food and sugar and wine and gummies and busyness and productivity and noise. And again, none of those are necessarily the issue. The issue is avoiding what God wants to expose. So in James 1, it talks about trials, right? The testing of your faith produces perseverance, trials produce steadfastness. So don't short circuit the work God is doing. In Romans 5, it talks about suffering, produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope. And in Galatians 5, we see that fruit is grown, it's not manufactured, right? It's a fruit of the spirit, comes from abiding. And there's a difference between relief and abiding. And relief asks the question of how do I stop feeling this? Whereas abiding asks, Lord, what are you trying to show me? Relief removes awareness, right? Numbs us out or checks us out or distracts us or whatever, but abiding increases the awareness, right? It's intentionally sitting in that discomfort. Relief often numbs us, whereas abiding transforms us. There's also a difference between rest and escape. And I talked about this in the beginning about how when I had three kids under three, right, I had trained myself to want to escape from that and find relief. But here's the difference between real rest and escape. Real rest restores us, right? It refreshes us. Whereas escape postpones the inevitable, right? We we come back and we and we still feel as stressed and overwhelmed as soon as we walk back in the house. Rest actually leaves us renewed and refreshed. Whereas escape often leaves us needing another escape, right? I've never done drugs in my life, but it's the same kind of thing where you need more and more, more frequently to get the same feeling you had in the beginning. If your break doesn't produce more peace, gentleness, patience, or self-control, it probably wasn't true. Rest. This is where you can watch Netflix for hours and not actually feel rested. You can scroll on your phone for hours and not actually feel rested. And actually, the opposite is true because now you've just added to the overstimulation. So let me pose some practical questions for you before you reach for the thing. Ask yourself, what am I feeling? Or what am I trying not to feel? What do I hope this will do for me? Is this bringing me closer to Jesus or helping me to avoid him? Is God inviting me to numb or to abide? And the the answer to that one is pretty easy, right? In John 15, Jesus never promised symptom management. He promised fruit, and fruit grows by remaining, peace grows by remaining, joy grows by remaining, self-control goes by, grows by remaining. Right? It's the abiding. Abide in me and I abide in you. That's how it works. So the next time you want relief, pause. How many people do this? You this is something that you have to train yourself to do. You have to pause before you reach for something, right? Pause before you pull up your phone and go shopping online. Pause before you go to the pantry. Pause before you grab that drink or grab that bag of gummies or pause before you sit down in front of the TV or whatever it may be for you. Pause. Don't immediately reach for the thing. Sit with Jesus first and pray honestly. Open your Bible. So often we reach for these quick reliefs because we're spiritually starving. And if we would just sit with Jesus, open our Bible and pray honestly, and then journal these questions and actually sit with God and ask him to help us to answer these things, asking him to what he's revealing, asking him to search your heart before you soothe it. I think what you're going to find is that you don't actually need another break. Maybe you need the Prince of Peace. Maybe what you're calling self-care has become self-protection. Maybe Jesus isn't inviting you to ignore your pain. I know he's not. Because when you're reaching for quick relief, you're adding more to your burden because you're making yourself the one that's going to fix it. When there's a reason why so many people don't understand what Jesus meant when he said, Come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest, for my burden is easy and my yoke is light, right? Most people listen to that. Most wives are like, I just don't understand that, right? It's because in your effort to self-soothe and to find quick relief without actually abiding and having real fruit of peace produced in you, what you're doing is you're taking that burden upon fixing yourself and finding refreshment on yourself, which you can't do. So in the next episode, we're going to answer the question of how do we actually abide? If peace is fruit, how is it produced? And why can't you medicate your way into fruit of the spirit? And what does abiding actually look like for a wife with kids, responsibilities, and a full life? So, with that, I will see you on the next episode.