Peace to You in 2024

As I begin this brand new year, I have hopes of lots of great memories made, lots of paintings painted and (hopefully) sold, but also I hope that by the time 2025 gets here, I will be a better person than I am today. But usually growth comes with struggle. So can I have it both ways? I’m not sure.

I was working on what was supposed to be a simple project the other day and encountered one problem after the other. I was making address labels from the Word app. I’ve done this before and think either I’m doing something wrong, or “Avery” or the “Word” app could make it so much easier. I watch YouTube videos and they do it totally different from the way I have to do it, but I can’t do what they do. It’s quite annoying. To add to that frustration, my Epson printer wouldn’t pull in the labels straight. I put in a sheet of plain paper and it would be perfect. I’d hold up to the light and yep, this is it. But every time the label sheet went in, it came out at a slant getting all of the individual address labels out of whack. Thankfully, Jimmy was in Easley so I asked him to stop by Staples and pick up more labels as I was quickly running through the few I had. Next, I tried my Canon printer and ran into a different problem with it, having to turn it off and back on and turn my computer off and on and so it went. I’m making a long story short here, but this went on for four hours total. I did stop to walk away for a few minutes a couple of times because my frustration level was out the roof. There may have been tears.

Even writing this sounds silly that I would get so upset over something like that, but I did. Then I felt guilty and asked God to forgive me for my pettiness when there are people going through such horrendous situations right now.

Have you ever done this? Gotten so very frustrated because you couldn’t make a problem work for you? It’s not a good feeling.

Then I thought about a quote that I’d read and heard so many times and it goes something like this:

“We can’t control our circumstances, but we can control our reactions to our circumstances.”

I’m afraid I reacted poorly to the bad, or really it was more inconvenient, circumstances. Makes me wonder how I’d do when something really bad happened.

But I’ve lived a long time so there have been really bad circumstances for me over the years. Here is one such occasion.

On December 30th, 1988 my dad suffered a brain bleed and the Dr’s didn’t think he would survive the surgery, but he did. When his doctor came to tell the family he survived, he still had a grim look on his face and said he didn’t think he would live through the night. He did live through the night, but remained in a coma for days after with us not knowing if he would ever wake from it. Several days in, I was at home about to get ready to go back to the hospital. I had a moment of anxiety and felt so tired of the not knowing if my dad would live or die.

I remember that hopeless feeling and in tearful prayer I begged God to help him, and to also help me because I was beyond anxious. Almost at that very moment, a peace came over me that I truly believe to be a gift from God and the words, “it will be okay” was heard by me. Not audibly, but I heard them all the same. I felt tremendous relief from whatever this was that happened, and drove over to the hospital.

When I arrived, my aunt and uncle gave me news that it looked like Dad had had a stroke while still in a coma, and that this could be the beginning of the end for him. Normally, I would have panicked and became more anxious with this news, but the peace held. The peace held in that storm! I told my aunt that God had spoken to me telling me that all would be okay. I think she was surprised at my calm, but I hope I helped to ease her heart a little in that moment.

Dad did come out of that coma and lived another nineteen years. However, he was not the same person as he suffered a lot of damage to his brain from that bleed. That voice did not tell me that things would be easy or that Dad would fully recover, but it did tell me that everything would be okay. I’ll admit, the days and years following did not always feel okay. They really didn’t. But I was able to laugh with my dad and cry with my dad and make memories with my dad for nineteen years after that incident. It was a growing period for me as his primary caregiver (with some help from others, thankfully) with tons of responsibility put on a 26 year old. But it truly was okay.

I think about that day I received peace for whatever the reason and that the circumstances were the same before and after I asked for help that day, but that peace that was given me eased my suffering in the moment and that was the best feeling in the world.

It’s my wish that as we have challenges, we can somehow acquire that peace from God as I call it, because it’s Holy. I think when Jesus talks about the kingdom of God being within us, he may have been talking about this peace - because it is heavenly.

Sending my best,

Connie