peace that passes understanding

     "Between the war and the economy, we're receiving a steady stream of reasons to despair.  I don't know the first thing about economics, but for the first time in my life, I find myself saying things like, "What happened to the Dow today?"  I don't even know what the Dow really is, and what exactly it means when something happens to it, but I feel like I should ask. 

     I got a letter recently from our bank.  Enclosed was a lovely little story, possibly written by a child, about rain and umbrellas and waiting out a storm, and essentially, it was a two-page way of saying, hey, don't freak out.  Um, I wasn't, really, til my bank sent me a letter about storms and floods written either for or by a seven-year-old.  

     Deep breath.  We are where we are.  The world is as beautiful and broken as it ever was, and if you're anything like me, it takes some tricks to get back to centered, whole, deep-breathing, faith-filled places.  On the days when, after watching the news or opening a letter from our bank, I'm tempted to lie down on the ground and let the anxiety I feel about our world flatten me like a steamroller, instead I do these things:

     I pray.  I speak to God, sometimes out loud, often in the car, frequently in the shower.  I ask for help about things I don't understand.  I ask for peace, and grace, and the ability to see outside myself.  I pray for people who are at the mercy of these scary headlines--auto workers by the thousands who are losing jobs, children who's parents are unable to provide for them.  And I pray for the people who can solve these problems--politicians both federal and local, pastors, philanthropists.  I pray for a way through, a light at the end of the tunnel."

     "And that's the core of prayer: admitting that just maybe, there's something going on that we can't see.  so when I'm afraid, I pray, and I ask for God's help, that I will be able to see something I wasn't able to see before, or at least trust him to do the seeing.

     Someone asked my dad recently how often we can pray for the very same thing, and he said that we should pray as often as we need to until the anxiety subsides, until, as it says in the Bible, we are filled with the peace that passes human understanding.  That sounds delicious: peace that passes human understand.  That's what I'm starving for, and so I've been praying, sometimes even just the same phrase or sentence over and over again.  I find that's an awful lot of praying for the same thing, but also that the anxiety does eventually subside, and the peace that does indeed come, and it's pretty much the best feeling in the world."

          -written by Shauna Niequist in her book 'bittersweet'