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The need to run…

I feel it coming. The unsettledness — like a vise squeezing any peace from my heart and mind. Soon, even my sure place of comfort ‘outside’ can’t ease this wave crashing over me.

I hide away just like those early days after my husband, Steve, passed away.

“Why?” I ask myself.

I’m not new at this thing called grief.

Eight years have passed speedily by, even as the struggle for contentment is so slow in coming.

Ever shifting – you find your footing in grief and call it progress, then it all shifts, and you are forced to start it all again. What is the answer to this struggle?

Acceptance
Contentment
Peace

Can peace be found without first coming to the place of acceptance?

How do you find that peace? Do we…

• Push ourselves more
• Be Better
• Be Different

Are those things the answer?

Sometimes, we simply look in all the wrong places for contentment.

Desperate for Contentment and Peace

After Steve passed away, I grieved for the places we traveled together. Winter Park to ski. Galveston to see the ocean. Would I ever get to see those places again? Would I want to see them without him?

About a year ago a sweet friend said, “Let’s celebrate turning 70. We’ll go on a cruise to Alaska.”

Thinking 70 hadn’t been much to talk about so far, I said, ‘OK’ and started to save.

As the day approached, I thought, “This is it!” I would become a world traveler which would surely extinguish that need to run.

There were some very important things I realized about myself while on that ship.

I don’t seem to ever be able to settle down and rest.

Being completely separated from my people is unbearable and causes near panic at all times.

Any hurdle or glitch sends my heart racing and blood surging to my head.

Desperate for Home

Sweaty palms and seatbelt fastened – ready for take-off to head home – departure scheduled for 8:35 p.m.

And the announcement is made…

“There is a problem with engine #2, but it’s not serious.”

Imagine the next thing you hear around midnight is, “Get off the plane.”

Now, imagine getting text -after-text telling you about another delay in your return flight home.

TWO DAYS LATER, no sleep, very little to eat – all bags having been collected and not released after yet another flight cancellation.

There you stand, in an airport in Alaska, and you cannot get home.

And you realize, peace cannot be found in running, and you are desperate for home.

Where can peace be found?

Surrender

Brings Acceptance

Acceptance brings Contentment and Peace

As I stood before those airline employees that night, the condition of that disabled plane was out of their control, and they could not get me home. Just as powerless to control that decision, I cannot change the fact that Steve is not part of my world here on this earth now. It was never in my control.

I can battle that truth body, soul and mind, but it will change nothing. It is all part of a divine plan that I might not be able to understand today, but I must trust God with it all.

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
John 14:8 (NIV)

How true! If we can see our Father and trust Him…that will be enough for us!

Home never looked and felt so good.

How wonderful it was to finally drive through that gate in those late-night hours and be home.

I am asking the Lord for His help…

Help me to not only accept the truth that Steve waits for me in Heaven, separated for just a little while longer but help me to just accept me for who He made me to be. Maybe not a world traveler, but one who will celebrate the beautiful place He has given me that I get to call home… and once shared with the most wonderful man, husband and friend.

I found peace that night in coming home, and it felt a lot like contentment.

Have you felt like you have reached the end of your ‘efforts’? That you have nothing left in you to keep going…feeling like it is just too hard? I sure did standing at that airport stranded in Anchorage, Alaska.

Through my recent travels, I became desperate to get home…to my earthly home. But there is a Home I am longing for more…

“For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
2 Corinthians 5:1 (NKJV)

When waves of grief come against you, no matter how long it has been since you began this journey, don’t panic. Our Lord Jesus has not left us to steady our feet alone. His mercies are new every single morning, and He will never leave nor forsake us.

As we continue our search for acceptance and peace and worry seems to cloud the way, let’s remember…

“When my worry is great within me, Your comfort brings joy to my soul.”
Psalm 94:19 (NLV)

Dear Heavenly Father, help us to find our peace and contentment in You as we walk this journey. Help us to trust You, Lord, as we are making our way Home. Amen