Inner Peace

Where can I turn for peace?
Where is my solace
When other sources cease to make me whole?
When, with a wounded heart, anger, or malice
I draw myself apart searching my soul?

Where, when my aching grows?
Where, when I languish?
Where, in my need to know?
Where can I run?
Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?
Who, who can understand?
He, only One.

He answers privately.
Reaches my reaching.
In my Gethsemane, Savior, and friend.
Gentle, the peace He finds
For my beseeching.
Constant He is, and kind.
Love without end.

In my busy, hectic, helter-skelter world, inner peace can be so hard to find.  Yet, I think it is necessary if I really want to find my Savior.  I have found that I need to slow down, take a breath, and simply listen to what is going on around me.  

I suppose it is a little like the stars that come out each night.  They shine and sparkle in the sky, showing us grandeur that is seldom really noticed.  You have to take your eyes off the world around you and look up.  You have to make the effort to notice.  The effort to change, the effort to really see.  

In my small town, there are not too many lights.  The businesses close early, the lights are put out, and the darkness surrounds every single space.  It is so much darker than anywhere else I have lived in before.  

I must admit that I have found myself afraid of the deep darkness that surrounds me.  Sometimes, I want nothing more than to dash into the house where all the lights are blazing in warming welcome.  But on the nights of the deepest darkness, my husband drags out his telescope and puts it in the middle of our dark, dirt road.  Then he gets the girls and drags them all out to the road where they take turns looking up at the heavens to see the different stars and the amazing meteor showers that seem to happen often in the middle of the darkest nights.  There are many nights when you will find my husband and all three girls huddled around the telescope at 2:00AM with jackets and mugs of hot chocolate, learning to appreciate the footprints of God in the heavens above them.  

I think that inner peace can be found much like the stars in the sky.  You must make a conscious choice to look and see.  A choice to quit looking at the world right under your nose and start looking toward God in the heavens above.  A choice when you must slow down, breath, and simple absorb the peace that can be found in the footprints of God.  

SYMPTOMS OF INNER PEACE

1. Tendency to think and act spontaneously, rather than from fears based on past experiences.
2. An unmistakeable ability to enjoy each moment.
3. Loss of interest in judging self.
4. Loss of interest in judging others.
5. Loss of interest in conflict and one-upmanship.
6. Loss of interest in interpreting actions of worry.
7. Loss of ability to worry (This is a SERIOUS symptom!).
8. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
9. Feelings of contentment and connectedness with others and with Nature.
10. Frequent attacks of smiling.
11. Increased susceptibility to love and to "passing it forward."
12. Increased tendency to let things happen rather than make things happen.

NOTE: If you have all or even most of the above symptoms, your condition of Inner Peace may be so far advanced as to be untreatable!  (And oh, wouldn't that be something to have!)