PWA Daily Writing Challenge Day 2: Life's Next Chapter: Chasing Understandable Peace

 My blogger profile reads that I'm a widowed mother of two humans and a dog.  I'm a Jesus follower, a soccer mom, homeschooling mom, fine arts mom, working mom,  and an alumnus of the University of North Carolina.  My heart is kind, my faith is battle tested and I'm sometimes too smart for my own good.

So life is a challenge; but I am never bored.  If I had a desire granted for the next chapter, it would be clarify of the path forward with understandable peace.  Clarity of the path forward would mean I am sure of my next steps.  What is understandable peace?  It goes back to a Bible passage that I've held on to for years.  Phillippians 4:6-7 in the New Living Translation reads as follows: 

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I'm familiar with the peace that transcends all understanding.  The situations I have navigated during my husband's illness, in the aftermath of his death, and around the struggles with grief while raising grieving children...those things tinker with one's sanity.  Without that peace, that I literally cried out for every day, I don't make it.

Understandable peace though would mean I don't have anything about which to be anxious.  Understandable peace would mean no one in my life is saying, "I don't know how you do it."  It would mean no one is noting how strong I am or how tired I might be or standing in awe of my resilience or strength of spirit.  It would mean that I'm not uncertain.  It would mean that life is calm but not supernaturally calm.  It's just calm.

If I am being honest, since my husband died, I have been sure of just two things I absolutely have to do.  I have to show God gratitude because prayer and supplication keep me in the right space. And I have to provide for my family.  

The first one got easier once I understood that God understands my feelings.  So even when the prayer is "Ugh, I'm really tired of being responsible for every single solitary thing," I could say that and work through it.  The second one entails a lot of things and covers several areas.  Sequences of events have me questioning a variety of things.  I've made decisions that I never question like the one to take on my son's education.  It's one of those things that can't be wrong because it feels so amazing even though it comes with difficulty.  

Then there are the questionable actions.  I wonder if I have taken the right career path even after twenty years.  I took the path that allowed me to provide.  I don't regret that; but with changes in life and as I age, I am more curious about the other road.  I love writing.  I've wanted to be a writer of some kind since I was little; but it didn't seem practical so in college I studied something that was.  Here years later I still love writing; but  that isn't enough.  Writing is also a business.  And a business I know very little about.  My confession is that I left myself little energy to learn about it while I deferred to the path of provision.  But Proverbs 13:12 in the New Living Translation reads as follows: 

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.

I have begun to consider if the peace I'm looking for is in the dream I put away because it looked unobtainable.  Because it didn't look like it would provide.  I think it is time to find out.