Peace Out!...and In!!

Graduation season has come and almost gone, and honestly I struggled to get through it. I saw picture after picture of people that graduated high school the same year as I did graduate from college this year. In a perfect world I would have been one of them. In the last four years my life has had several unexpected turns...one after the other, after the other. They have been some of the most challenging years and experiences of my life to date. I have yet to see the rhyme or reason to it all, but still I am here.

I have had my moments over the last few weeks as I watched people graduate where I wallowed in self pity which, ironically, led me to a realization that brought so much peace to my heart.

My life is NOTHING like I imagined it would be at this point, but somehow I have this overwhelming peace within that I am EXACTLY where I am SUPPOSED to be. Sometimes it feels like I'm nowhere hoping to end up somewhere, but the truth is that God knows my eternity. Someway the experiences that have brought me here are all pieces of the puzzle. While that fact alone is not always comforting, it doesn't cease to be truth.

For the first time in my life I am beginning to understand what it means when the Bible says in Phillipians 4:7 "And the peace of God that transcends all understanding will guard your heart and your minds in Christ Jesus."

They used to be just words on a page. Now they are living, breathing, life-changing. There is no explanation for me to have peace that I am in the right place at the right time when nothing around me points toward answers. Nothing tells me where I am going. Nothing on the outside says I'm going anywhere. But yet I know that I am somewhere now. Beyond any answers I have...I know that I am exactly where I need to be for whatever it is that is next for me.

In the middle of an ongoing storm, in the middle of a desert surrounded by unanswered questions, in the middle of a world at war...

I have peace. My heart is at peace. When my mind struggles to be at peace my spirit takes over and keeps me at peace. Beyond my understanding I have peace and I am trusting that God is guarding my heart and mind from the voices inside that tell me I am on a road going nowhere. More than anything a college degree could give me right now...I have peace.

Peace Out!