I embody peace

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Well, hey my baby. Welcome back to Gentle Hours. I hope this morning has found you well. And if it hasn't, I hope it has at least found you willing to give yourself the same grace that you freely offer to everyone else. Before we get into day's conversation, I want you to settle in wherever you are. And baby, if you're driving, keep your eyes on the road. If you're sitting with your coffee, I need you to take a sip. If you're still under the covers trying to negotiate with the day, I completely understand because there are mornings when life feels eager to place responsibilities on your shoulder before we've even had the opportunity to fully wake up. I've been sitting with this phrase this week, and the longer I sat with it, the more I realized that it wasn't simply a phrase. It was really, you know, an invitation for me to look at my life differently. It was an invitation to examine how I move through the world and how I allow the world to move through me. And the phrase is simply, I choose to embody peace. And the reason that phrase has stayed with me is because I've noticed that most people spend a large portion of their lives trying to find peace while simultaneously participating in the very things that rob them of it. Baby, we say we want peace. But we constantly revisit conversations that have already ended. We've said we want peace, but we played disappointments so many times that we keep reopening the wounds that we're finally beginning to heal. And baby, we say we want peace. But we attach ourselves to outcomes we cannot control and then spend precious energy worrying about scenarios that haven't happened. So with that, I need you to take a breath. This one may be a little heavy, so I need you to inhale one more time, my baby, and when you hold it, I want you to hold it with intention. And when you release, I want you to release everything that you've been holding that does not look and feel like peace. There you go. I thought once the bills were paid, you know, once the relationships improved, once the children, you know, grew up and settled, once the opportunities arrived, once the uncertainties disappeared, then peace would finally make its entrance. What life eventually taught me was that there is always another chapter, there was always another responsibility, and there is always another season requiring something from you, my baby. If peace depends on life becoming perfectly organized, most of us will spend our entire lives postponing it. What I've come to understand is that peace isn't something waiting for me at a finish line. Peace has to accompany me while I am running my own race. And baby, we learn how to work through exhaustion, we learn how to keep going when we were overwhelmed. We learned how to carry things very quietly. We learn how to smile while struggling. We learn how to push through what many of us never learned was how to sit with ourselves when there wasn't an emergency demanding our attention. And I've noticed something interesting. I've noticed something interesting about people who have spent a long time in survival mode. When life finally becomes calm, you know, they often don't know what to do with the calm. In fact, the calm can make them uncomfortable because they become so accustomed to managing problems that peace feels unfamiliar. You know, that nervous system starts searching for something to fix. They begin anticipating a problem that hasn't come, they start preparing for disasters that may never happen because you know chaos has become familiar, and you know, familiarity often disguises itself as some kind of comfort. I think. I think that's why embodying peace requires intention. It requires us to recognize when we're creating emotional aid before ourselves that doesn't actually need to exist. It requires us to notice when we've started carrying things that belong to somebody else. It requires us to ask difficult questions about why we feel responsible for outcomes that were never ours to manage in the first place. One of the hardest lessons is that not everyone deserves your emotional investment. But that, you know, it sounds simple. Until life begins to life, it sounds simple. Until somebody misunderstands your intentions, it sounds simple until someone forms an opinion about you that isn't rooted in any kind of truth. It sounds simple. Until a relationship changes unexpectedly, it sounds simple until you find yourself standing in a situation you didn't ask for and you certainly didn't deserve. That's when peace becomes more than an idea. That's when peace becomes your practice. Because baby, peace is not revealed by how we respond when everything is going our way. Peace, my baby, reveals itself when we are presented with opportunities to become, you know, anxious, angry, defensive, controlling, fearful, and we consciously choose not to surrender ourselves to those reactions. I think one of the greatest gifts age will provide us is the understanding that everybody does not need access to your energy. And there was a time when I felt obligated to explain myself thoroughly. I wanted people to understand my heart. I wanted people to know my intentions. I wanted to make sure that every misunderstanding was corrected and every assumption was addressed. But what I eventually learned was that people have already decided what they believe, and no amount of explanation will change their commitment to misunderstanding you. And you don't stop caring about people, you don't suddenly become cold, you aren't being dismissive, but but you finally understand that peace and over-explaining cannot comfortably coexist in the same space. That lesson alone has brought a tremendous amount of peace into my life, and I want you to gain that peace as well. Peace will teach you that there is a difference between caring and carrying for a long time. I think we have all confused the two. Matter of fact, I think some of you still lie. I believe that, you know, if I love people, I should carry their problems with them. I believe that if I care deeply enough, I should feel responsible for helping everyone to arrive at their sufficient place. I believe that being supportive, you know, meant becoming emotionally attached to outcomes that belong to other functioning adults. What I've learned is that caring and caring are not the same thing. I can care about you and still understand that your healing belongs to you. I need you to release the notion that you must carry to heal people. I can care about you and still understand that your decisions belong to you. Let them figure it out their own way. Because my baby, when we start carrying what belongs to everybody else, we eventually become too exhausted to carry what belongs to ourselves. And my baby, there are far too many people walking around depleted because they become emotional pack of mules for everybody in their lives. Yeah, that peace. Peace asks us to put some of that weight down. Peace asks us to trust that other grown people are capable of participating in their own lives. Peace, you know, ask us to stop volunteering for assignments that God never gave us. I think that's especially important for women because many of us have been praised for our ability to carry heavy things. We've been celebrated for being dependable. We've been applauded for being strong. We've been admired for our ability to keep going when everybody else would have stopped. The problem is that strength without rest always turns into exhaustion, my baby. Strength without boundaries, you know. It'll show up as resentment. You know, that strength without peace eventually puts you into survival mode, and survival was never supposed to become any kind of permanent residence for you. It may have been necessary for a season, survival, that is. It may have gotten you through difficult years, it may have protected you, and life was demanding more than you thought you could give, but there comes a point when surviving is no longer enough. We have the wisdom to recognize what deserves our attention and what deserves our release. We have enough wisdom to recognize what belongs in our hands and what belongs to God. We have the wisdom to understand that every battle is not our assignment. We also have the wisdom to stop postponing joy while waiting for certainty. And so, as I said with this phrase throughout the week, I realized that embodying peace means carrying myself differently. It means refusing to allow every inconvenience to become a crisis. I mean, you know. It means that I refuse to allow every disappointment to become a prophecy about my future. It means refusing to allow temporary circumstances to determine the atmosphere of my life. Because life, my baby, is happening right now, not next year, not when everything is perfect, not when all of your questions have answers, not when everybody finally agrees with you. Life is happening in the moment, it's happening in the growth that's taking place inside of you, even when you don't yet recognize it. And I don't want us to spend so much time preparing for life that we forget to actually live it. So this week, my baby. Whenever anxiety starts trying to, you know, bring you into a future that hasn't happened yet. I want you to come back to this raise. Whenever fear starts making promises it cannot keep, I want you to come back to this raise. Whenever responsibilities begin piling up and you find yourself carrying things that were never yours to hold, I want you to come back to this raise and say it. I choose to embody peace. Because peace has become a way of moving through the world, and I want you to refuse to postpone it until circumstances decide they're allowing you to have it. Alright, my baby. You embody peace. And I want you to take care of yourself this week, and I will see you next week.