Finding peace where you are, not where you want to be

​Last Christmas morning was the most challenging morning since my divorce a few years ago. You don't ever expect to wake up in your own version of Home Alone, so there's really no way to prepare for it.

Last Christmas, "peace on earth, good will to men" were nothing more than lyrics sung by those living in peace to people also living in peace.

Me, I was neither singing nor hearing.

I remember telling myself, Christmas will look different next year. Because in my mind, I was picturing the kind of circumstances that would look and feel more like peace.

(Enter stage left: reality.)

The reality is I woke up this Christmas morning in pretty much the exact same circumstances I woke up in last year. To my surprise, though, there was peace.

Last year I was looking for circumstances that felt like peace.

This year I was greeted by a God who felt like peace. (He was there last year, he just didn't look much like my circumstances so I missed him.)

Steven Furtick says, "it is impossible to experience peace when you're expecting perfection."

It's easy to start defining peace as the circumstances we long for. Which makes it easy to define turmoil by the circumstances we are in. Oh dear Lord, the amount of time I've spent lamenting the circumstances I am in or longing for circumstances better than those.

How many of you can relate?

But I had friends reach out with timely messages this Christmas. Not with encouragement or not with promises it will all get better, but directly or indirectly reminding me that the God of peace was with me right there and then.

My Christmas morning walk on the beach. The God of the sunrise breaking through the cloudy circumstances to remind me, I am here.

The God of perfection voluntarily showing up in an imperfect Christmas morning world to assure us that he never needs a perfect place or a perfect situation or perfect people to deliver peace.

He simply needs us to look deep inside our circumstances, no matter what they are, and say: I see you God.

I accept your peace.

Because that is life.

Peace is not accepting our circumstances, peace is accepting God in the midst of whatever those circumstances might be.

Do I long for different circumstances in the year ahead? In some cases, you bet.

Do I need different circumstances in the year ahead to experience peace? Not nearly as much as I did last year.

Peace is a journey, and I am headed in the right direction.

May we all journey closer to peace in the year ahead, no matter what the year ahead brings.