Perfect Peace
“You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.”
Isaiah 26:3-4
I have often said the phrase “I promise there was a train of thought” right before saying something that would imply the train derailed long ago. My mind is always thinking. I don’t know if it ever shuts off. Even my dreams are out of control – randomly connected things from my day writing out a ludicrous narrative for my nighttime entertainment.
Since entering into the life stage of motherhood, my thoughts have been accompanied with an unwelcomed friend – fear. When Selah would sleep soundly on my chest, my mind would drift to the hundreds of things that could go wrong. When I heard her little nose struggling with congestion, my thoughts would torture me of worst case scnarios. In the middle of the night, I would jolt awake thinking I heard her in distress, only to see her peacefully at rest next to us.
Fear has found me in different stages of life, but this stage in particular has been a breeding ground for these thoughts to arise.
What is so frustrating about fear is how irrational it can be, especially mixed in with the lovely postpartum hormones. An irrational fear would arise, grip my heart and delight in trying to pull me under so often during Selah’s newborn days. I knew the truth to combat the fear, but the voice of fear was SO LOUD!
In all honesty, those moments when fear and truth wrestled each other in my mind, I thought I was going to lose it. I would say to myself, “Here is what I know, and here is how I feel” and rarely would those two things line up. More times than not, my feelings have won the battle and I’ve allowed myself to give into the despair fear can cause.
But that’s just the thing. It is a battle.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12
The passage I began with from Isaiah is such a beautiful promise. But keeping our minds stayed on Christ? That is no easy task. There are thousands of things clamoring for our attention every day seeking to take the place of primary occupant in our thoughts and subsequently our emotions. It’s a fight to keep our mind stayed on Christ.
But oh friend the fight is worth it! Because the triumphant result is peace! The passage continues to say God is an everlasting rock. He isn’t going anywhere. He never changes. There are times when I feel the fear coming on. A single, off-hand, irrational thought pops into my mind and threatens to derail any tranquility I’ve found in my own strength. And it’s there that I have a choice – do I listen to the voice of fear or do I run to my unchanging, steadfast God? One offers turmoil while the other offers peace. It is an easy pick when you write it on paper, but as I said before, the voice of fear is SO LOUD! So the easy pick becomes a full-on battle. One that I still lose on occasion.
But the times when God’s strength rises in my heart, helping me run into his arms, those are the times of sweet peace. The times when I can look at the fear and say “Yes, if that happened, it would be awful and horrible and hard. But God is with me now and he would be with me then. So pardon me while I ignore your tempting offer and choose to rest safely in the truth of my Savior.”
If you struggle with this as I do, take heart! Stay strong and, with war-like aggression (thank you Matt Papa for that wonderful phrase), keep your sights set above. “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock” (Isaiah 26:4). Praise God for this glorious truth!
