Moving Again ... And Cultivating Inner Peace

Moving is something I have done a lot of times in my life. Nineteen times to be exact … I don’t think that includes all the times I switched dorms in college or apartments in Florida. The point is, I’m pretty used to boxing up my life and being filled with the need to make it feel like home again. And this has to be done immediately. There is no time for rest until the job is done. Until every last picture is hanging, every last drawer perfectly organized, and every speck of dust cleaned from the floor, my brain feels like a chaotic war zone. I hate for my homey oasis to be disrupted by a move, but my career causes me to move a lot, so I buckle down, think about nothing else, and do nothing else until yet another move-in process is totally finished. It gets old, but I still do this every time, because the need to feel at last at peace is greater than the need to take a semi-relaxing, but really more eye-twitching break because my house is still in disarray.

I didn’t write this blog to just talk about the moving process. As usual, there is a heart issue at work here that warrants addressing. Why does the desire to be perfectly settled plague my thoughts so rampantly that I can’t even think about sending a simple email until it is all said and done? How is it that this house has almost completely come together in a week when it should have taken months? And why, even as I sit here in my lovely reading nook with my coffee and my cat, do I find I am still gritting my teeth? My muscles a little tense as I try to feel perfectly restful, and thoughts darting around as I try to feel solitude?

Because I can’t create peace.

In all my efforts to make a perfect house with perfect order and perfect vibes, I am desperately trying to secure for myself the inner peace that only God can bring. I have been working round the clock, 8am-1am to get this place feeling right. This house came together in a week because I’ve been obsessively racing around to secure that inner peace as soon as possible lest my head explode. Yet I am still left with a “now what?” feeling, because this “clean-home” kind of peace is only a mere copy of the peace I find in Him, and it will always come up empty.

I truly love interior decorating and organizing as a creative outlet. It brings me so much happiness to see what I can do with a space and see it transform from start to finish. But it is still only an orchestration of the creativity God has given me to recreate something that was His in the first place. And the sense of peace I feel upon a project’s completion can in no way rival the peace that God offers. The danger is never in good things but always in the idolization of them.

No matter how perfect I try to make any situation on the outside I need to look to Jesus to bring me resounding peace on the inside. No spotless house, no perfectly folded clothes, no pristinely organized desk drawer will bring me the peace I am seeking. It may bring me happiness. It is still totally fun and satisfying, and I think there is no crime in leading an orderly life. But it may give me the dangerous illusion that I am in control of the chaos in my life. And the fact is, I am not in control. Only God is - Thank goodness for that. And organizing my outer world won’t instill the deep peace I am craving.

True peace comes from organizing my inner world in a fashion that puts God on the pedestal first and foremost. When He is first, I can watch everything trickle down into place like colored pencils fitting into a turn table. As satisfying as it is to see my mason jars of baking goods nested in clear plastic bins, the satisfaction I receive from Him is far more lasting, promising, and lacking nothing. My desire for perfection cannot be fulfilled in and of myself. No. I would forever come up empty and needing more. He has given me that strange desire for perfection and order because He is perfection, and He wants me to seek Him. He is the key to the lock. How beautifully He has designed us to long for Him. How beautifully He has designed us with needs that He can absolutely fill to the point of overflow. Though we disguise this longing as things that can be satisfied here on this earth, our hearts when we open them up, are sure that He is the one who gives joy, who gives meaning, and who answers all the mysteries of the universe. Only He can provide peace. Only he can satisfy. Only He is in control. Without Him nothing is right. But with Him everything is.

God’s peace is the only way I am carving out time to write this blog write now. I do not need to hold onto time. I do not need to hold onto control. I do not need to hold some illusion of peace. None of them are mine to keep. They are God’s gifts for me to steward in ways that glorify Him. And if this post even touches one person in a very small way today it will have been worth the time spent writing it and the mental stillness it required. May the God of peace be with us always, and may we always look to Him when we feel the yearning to hold onto our lives. He is always the better option.