peace is hard

"Peace is hard. You can do hard things."

I read this today on a blog that I just recently started reading. Her ability to write with such honesty about her faith, her emotions, her suffering and her healing is astonishing to me. 
The peace she mentioned isn't the world-peace-no-guns type of peace - it's inner peace. The past few weeks we have worked hard to fight for peace, which seems to be paradoxical but I can promise you that it is not. 

The funny thing is that we didn't know that at first. When life throws 5,000 lemons at you all at once, let me tell you that my first thought was not, "Well, time to fight for peace!" No, no. Your first thought is more like, "Are you kidding me?" perhaps with some stronger language. And we search for answers and clues as to how it all happened and try to answer why it happened and even spend time being offended and angry. We were fighting for peace without knowing it. 

I used the word fight because I've never been able to move from anger and offense to peace by sitting still and waiting for it. That usually just gives me room to stew over my anger with more intensity. I have to fight for peace - I have to take some intentional steps forward to carry on, warrior and fight through the web of disappointment and despair and chaos. I have to face my own emotions, and most of the time I feel like I have to battle to really encounter those. Some people are feelers by nature, but I'm staunchly rooted in the thinker field. It takes a lot of energy for me to encounter and face and put words to my emotions.

So we were intentional at working to not stifle the other one when they had their moments. We warred for honesty and vulnerability with ourselves and each other. That gave us room to get centered, to talk about what we do  know about this season, what we're sensing in our spirit about what we're supposed to do. And it gave us room to laugh a little.

And then peace entered. It was a messy fight. It made me so thankful to be married to a courageous and honest man. One who's not afraid to disappoint me momentarily if he trusts and believes that he's making the right decision. 

And every day I have to remind myself of the battle and walk through it again (only much quicker this time because now there's what I imagine to be a trail). It's easier to walk each day.

Peace is hard. It's intentional. & we've been fighting for it.