Most people that meet me tell me straight up that I’m a laid back – easy to get along with person – so it’s interesting to also do some self-reflection and acknowledge that I also struggle with peace. Isn’t it funny how people can see you as one thing and be surprised that that’s not the whole story?
It’s easy to identify those patterns in hindsight because time and learning new things makes it clearer to spot. As a kid I struggled with peace because I was always trying to do everything perfectly. As a teenager, I still struggled with perfectionism but I also struggled with how others perceived me and being overly self-critical. It’s obvious now that I struggled to master having peace because fundamentally I struggled with being good enough. The bar was too hard to reach but I kept trying to get it right and in that striving – you are never at peace.
Psalms 46 says to “be still and know that I am God”. Sounds simple enough but fundamentally I like to troubleshoot problems, try new things, and keep going. That can help me a lot in my job but it is less sustainable when you turn that on yourself.
By far my longest and hardest struggle has been healing from SA. Trauma has a way of detonating everything in its path no matter how deep you believed your roots to be. I’ve tried many methods of healing over the last 6 years from medication to therapy to neurofeedback and hopefully one day EMDR. But what about God? Yes, I have also prayed for healing – asked other people to pray for healing and struggled to understand why both the physical healing from the world hasn’t fixed me and also why faith or divine intervention hasn’t. So back to peace.
How do you find peace or stop striving when you are actively suffering? At what point is it giving up? I don’t have the answer otherwise I wish I could tell you – or write a book about it. 🙂
The best I can offer in the journey I am still walking in – is to do your best in the free will you were given to find solutions. This can look like therapy, or medication. We should still try – it’s not disobedient to use the medical solutions offered to us in the world to ease our suffering. But I’m also learning to try to trust God again in the pain and uncertainty. To let go little by little of what the outcome is and to try to find peace knowing it’s not solely up to me to get me through it.
