Peace - Where Is It?

Last night as I lit the second candle of Advent which signifies PEACE, I was struggling with where is there peace.  The world news is full of conflict and certainly not peace.  With journeying through the teenage angst wilderness, PEACE is a rare commodity and difficult to find.  I wish I could say that I can easily find PEACE within my soul and being but even that is elusive at the moment.

Last year at this time, I think I was feeling more at peace within as I was receiving results from the diagnostic tests and we were eliminating the most serious types of cancers.  This year, I am struggling with wanting change to take place within me and my home.  In my experience as we travel through the process of change, it does not include a peaceful time until the changes are in effect and we are settled with them for some time.  It is much like moving into a new house.  There is the chaos of packing all the belongings which includes wrapping all the fragile items in paper, filling the boxes and padding the fragile items with more paper, cleaning out drawers and purging as well as packing.  Then there is the moving which includes loading the truck and other vehicles for the trip to the new house and then the weeks of unpacking.  But there is still not a sense of a home until you've lived in the new house for awhile and are settled.  Not that I'm moving but making changes to oneself is very much like moving.  So PEACE is a little elusive this year.

I'm also struggling to keep the "cancer bug" off my shoulder.  I always have it sitting on my shoulder saying "I'm just waiting and biding my time, then I'm coming for you again."  This does not promote peace within.  I have started a Worry Journal to help with coping with some of my anxieties and worries.  The return of cancer is at the top of the list.  I write my worries in the Worry Journal and it helps to relieve them and remind me to hand them over to God to look after.  My oncologist is still confident that the lymphoma will not return.  You would think that it would help to give me PEACE but so far it is not.  I've also had a sore and achy shoulder since June.  I'm finally going to the doctor about it because it is affecting the nerves down into my right hand.  It is making it difficult to write with a pen, to stir and mix food in a bowl and to clean my house.  Vacuuming is affected and the ability to press and scrub with my right hand.  So far it is not affecting my piano playing.  I worry about is it cancer in the bones?  What is causing this?  These worries are interfering with my ability to be at PEACE within.

This week, I'm trying to continue my journey through Advent by maintaining HOPE and searching inwardly for PEACE.  As I've gone out into the stores to do Christmas shopping, I do find I'm less bothered by the commercialism this year.  I don't notice it as much because I am happy to be alive to enjoy this Christmas.  So that is the starting place for me for my PEACE.  I love the Christmas music.  I still have HOPE for positive change within myself and my family.  Maybe I can use that HOPE to help bring me PEACE.  I know that blogging today has helped me to feel a little more calm.  That is the starting point for feeling PEACE.  How can we wish "Peace on earth" if we do not feel PEACE ourselves?  At church yesterday, we were encouraged to go out into the world and "live a life of joy".  I think this week, my challenge to myself is to go out into the world and attempt to live a life of PEACE.

How will I live a life of peace you ask?  I will try to stop my thoughts in their tracks when I start to think of what I have not done, or what someone else has not done.  I will try to get back into the habit of daily meditation and reading such as I was doing when I was in treatment for the lymphoma.  I don't want to have to do chemo again but that process did force me to STOP, PONDER and RELAX.  I have been forgetting to do these things and as a result there is chaos around me and inside me.  So when I asked myself "Peace -where is it?", I think I may have found the answer for my personal inner PEACE.  The challenge now is to make the time to stop, ponder and relax in a quiet setting as well as to ignore the physical chaos around me.

When I started writing this post this morning, I truly was at a loss for PEACE.  In the process of writing this entry and contemplating PEACE, I have perhaps found one way of  promoting PEACE within.  Perhaps another way of gaining my inner peace would be to return to the habit of posting daily to my blog.  I've been having difficulty posting daily since September.  So off I go now to try to live a day of PEACE.