My Peace

In the last couple of years my life has been chaos. I blamed God for a lot of it because when you don’t really wanna take a long hard look at yourself, blaming God is the way to go and He is always merciful and takes it. Just like Jesus took it when the soldiers mocked Him and spat on Him. When He stood before Pilot He said “you have no power over me that has not been granted to you from above”, which is still true today. Blaming God, being mad at Christ and closing my ears to the Holy Spirit are all powers given to me by God in the first place with the gift of free will. But it never ceases to amaze me just how far God will go to get our attention so that we snap out of that cycle of anger and resentment against Him. Not because He needs us to not be angry with Him or because He needs anything from us but because He created us for one reason: to love us. To give us everything that we need to be happy.

The problem is that when things start going wrong in any kind of way we tend to blame others and not look at ourselves. We think “when am I ever going to be happy” (usually the “like __________” follows) because that is the trick of the evil one from the beginning, to get us to doubt in the truth that God wants our happiness. The devil lies to us and tells us that God wants us to be slaves and that eating the fruit will make us happy and God doesn’t want that. The fact is that God not only wants our happiness, but created us to BE happy and knows exactly what will make us happy if we would only ignore that serpent and follow the will of the One who created us and the world around us for our happiness. That’s so much easier said than done. And you know why? Because the voice of the serpent sometimes comes out of the mouths of the people around us.

Jesus said that the devil is a liar, accuser and a thief. It makes sense to me because usually accusations are made based off lies and they steal friendships and peace. It has happened to me on more than one occasion in life, even as a Catholic. I’ve been accused of not standing up boldly against the SCOTUS ruling legalizing gay marriage among other things. Well, here’s my thing: I know persecution is coming and it’s coming fast. I am making the choice to be rooted in prayer knowing that the Supreme Court could rule no other way based on the current state of affairs in this country. It is what it is. So I’m going to daily Mass, adoration, getting my degree so that I can do what I feel God is calling me to do even though I HATE school, and I’m staying off social media debates that cause me to lose my peace. I’m cutting out everyone who doesn’t build me up because I have work to do. My children are going to live in a culture that is hostile to them. A culture that is spitting on priests and will soon turn on the rest of us. I need to get them ready and rooted in Christ to face that. Arguing with fools who love the sound of their own typing to prove that they are right is a distraction from that. I’m not going to do it.

Keeping my peace is not about being silent and not standing up for the truth, it is about being able to have the faith that is going to teach and sustain my children and grandchild when they are being asked to deny Christ. There are more important things than being right as a great priest once told me when I was being one of those fools, and I see that now. Peace is more important. Raising missionaries, martyrs and saints is more important and being a witness of Christ to each person that He puts in my life is more important.

I am no longer mad at God, I thank Him for the chaos, it has humbled me and made me realize what a waste of time arguing on social media is. It is a distraction from what God is calling me to do. Being right is the fruit and I’m done reaching for it thinking that being right will make me happy.

How do you maintain your peace?