peace

Alectown, NSW, Australia, 2006. I am newly engaged and far away from familiarity and security. Far from home. I’m lying on a blanket that’s been spread out on the tired brown grass at Mamre Farm. Silence is my soundtrack as I scan the markings on the page of a novel, but my eyes cannot catch the words. Quiet can be distracting as it tries to calm. I lie back onto Steve’s stomach and close my eyes. I listen to the sound of the wind moving the few trees on Harry’s farm. I smell the heat from the Australian spring day. And I’m relaxed, it seems, for the first time in my life.

Peace is like a river. It flows to you, over you, overwhelming you. It’s refreshing, cool to the touch, but a touch to the inside soul part. I open my eyes and tell Steve, “I think this place is anointed.” With peace. It is the only way I can describe the thick calm that I feel in the air.

Hudson, WI, America, 2009. I am newly married and have no idea what home is these days, except for being with Steve. I am sitting with some campers at their hour-long yoga session at the day camp where I am working. The yoga teacher has taken us away from our usual spot under a tree near the office, to a different tree, far from the distractions of camp. We’ve crossed a huge field full of tall grass and accompanying grasshoppers. As we sit in the shade, we sense movement along the path we’ve just made. We look behind us, and see a deer prancing away from us. Most of my campers are calm as we sit and chat with the teacher about what makes us each special and what different things bring us peace and how it is all considered yoga. I turn my head away from the campers and the teacher for a moment, and stare across the field to nothing in particular. It is quiet, it is calm, but it lacks the soul touch.

This kind of peace is like the tide. It comes and goes with the hours of the day. I have known this peace my whole life, but never realized that the inconsistency of its existence made it inherently lacking. Until now.

I date the beginning of the growing process of true peace in my life to when I met my husband. Nothing in my history until then can come close to causing the amount of chaos that I have experienced in the last 4 years. I have grappled with the experience of learning to let go of security in an attempt to let God have full control over every little thing that I do. It wasn’t easy, but quite an essential part of my life story.

I’ve been through countless immigration issues, thinking that the end of the world lay at the other side of a decision the agents had to make. I’ve been in a situation where I had a job in which I needed a car, but no car in sight and no money to pay for one, only to have someone dream they gave me a car and wake up to make it a reality. We’ve had God give us a countless amount of money through the kindness of several people. And despite the economic climate we were living in at the beginning of our marriage, we have somehow managed to survive, while gaining weight due to the huge amount of good food that was provided for us.

And even with these stories, I still seem to find a way to doubt God. I still find myself wondering if we’ll have to call up our parents in a desperate attempt to have a roof over our heads. Wondering if we’ll mess up, and fully ruin any sort of task that God has given us.

Steve and I have this phrase that we say to each other whenever we think we’ve figured something out and then get burned by that something as we discover we really have no idea what we’re doing. He’ll say to me, “Kel, what’s life?” and I am meant to say, “A lesson.” And he’ll say, “And you learn it…?” to which I respond, “…as you go.” We laugh it off as our cheesy couple’s therapy that gets us through some of our stupid choice mistakes, but the sad reality is that we do mess up many, many times in our decisions, and we do learn extremely valuable lesson because of those unfortunate lapses in our judgment.

I sometimes wonder if we are in the right place. We’ve been floating for about 2 years now, not knowing where we’ll be for any longer than six months at a time. We’ve not felt that we were supposed to settle anywhere yet, and life has begun to appear a bit muddled. Even now, we are not 100 percent positive that we will be heading back to America on our trip’s return date.

Steve is finishing up his last day at Tabor College today. He has paid his graduation fee, and will soon be the proud holder of a Diploma of Ministry. We have had a long week of alone time, since Katherine and Lewis have let us stay at their apartment for this week of Steve’s class while they are away on holidays. I believe it is the first time we’ve had a place to ourselves since we moved out of our apartment on the 1st of May. It’s been a good week. After today, we will go up to join Katherine, Lewis, and Steve’s parents for a few days, but after that, we’ve got a whole extra month of Australia time and no idea what we’re going to do with it. We are lost, oblivious to what our purpose is at the moment, desiring to go home (although where that is located, we’ve no idea), uncertain about the future, and confused about recent events.

And for some strange reason, there is peace.