I was sitting up in bed one night, the hour I usually spend overthinking, and I noticed my mind had gone quiet.
That was the strange part. Nighttime is usually when it all comes for me, the running list of what happens next, what happens if this goes wrong or that falls through, everything unsettled lining up to be worried about. But that night there was nothing, not because I'd solved anything, but because I just wasn't reaching for the next thing. For once I noticed the not-reaching, and it felt like peace.
I'd been chasing that feeling for years without knowing that's what I was doing. I always thought peace was a destination, the way people treat happiness. Get the thing, fix the situation, line up all the pieces, and then you arrive and finally exhale. So I kept my head down and chased, and the chase does something to you. The highs get in your head and lift you to a level you can't stay at, and the lows drop you into the corner of a room. You spend the whole time either climbing or bracing, and neither one is peace.
What I learned is that peace doesn't wait for everything to be perfect. It showed up while things around me were still unfinished, while I was nowhere near where I wanted to be and didn't have it all together. I'd just come through something that could have ended me, the kind of thing that rearranges what you think matters, and on the other side of it I found a quiet I didn't have before. Maybe it takes something that heavy to get there. Maybe you have to face the worst version of what comes next before you can stop bracing for it.
It wasn't the absence of problems. It was the moment I stopped carrying the weight of what came next, all the things I used to carry on my own shoulders, the loss that might come, the job that might go, the questions about my health and my people. I set it down. For me, that meant handing it to God and trusting it would work out, whether or not I could see how. For you it might be something you'd word differently, but the mechanism is the same. Peace is what's left when you stop trying to hold the whole future in your hands.
Here's the lesson: you will not think your way to peace, and you will not achieve your way there either. It doesn't come from getting everything sorted, because everything will never be sorted. It comes from setting down the weight of what happens next. You can want things to be better and still be at peace where you are right now. Those two aren't enemies. The quiet you're chasing isn't waiting at the finish line of your problems. It's available in the middle of them, the moment you stop bracing for what's coming and let yourself be where your feet actually are. You will know it when you feel it, your whole body will, and the strangest part is that nothing around you has changed. You're okay anyway.
See you next Sunday.
THIS MONTH’S ESSAY
The Strong One
On being the person everyone leans on, and what it costs when nobody asks who you lean on.
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