Go to the places where peace can find you

​I have discovered something about my search for peace, a search I believe we all share in to some degree, and that is this; when I'm struggling to find peace, it's usually because I'm not in the places where I've come to know peace will surely find me.

Places like my writing. My visits to the mountains. My time in prayer. These are all places that require nothing of me other than my showing up and giving them my attention.

Too often, when I'm searching for peace, my attention is focused on things I lack, or things that need fixed, or maybe even people in my life that I think need fixed. Too often when I'm searching for peace, my focus is on things that need to show up and not on me and where I need to show up.

On my trip to southwest Virginia yesterday, I stopped at one of my favorite mountain overlooks. I stepped out of my car and walked over to the rock wall and just stared out at the mountains. Miles and miles of them. And I was overwhelmed with peace.

It was a peace that required no preparation. It didn't require me to ask the mountains to favor me and deliver peace. They just delivered. Like they always do.

It's the same with writing. As I sit here writing, peace overcomes me. It always does. Whether I'm writing about the good or the bad or ugly in life, writing pours out peace on me.

And it's the same with God. Maybe most of all, God. God's capacity to bring peace to my life changed when I discovered God doesn't have to show up meeting expectations in my life, but rather I simply need to show up and meet God without any expectations.

Peace is found in acknowledging God's mere presence. Something makes me feel like it's the same for God; my mere presence brings Him a sense of peace.

Maybe that's why we are all on such a search for peace. Because we have so many expectations about what it will look and feel like. We are so certain of that look and feel that we pour great effort into trying to manufacture it in the idea of our image of peace.

But what if peace isn't an outcome, but rather a place?

What if peace isn't expectations, but shared presence? And maybe shared presence begins to destroy peace when shared presence is no longer enough.

The mountains always feel like a messenger to me. To me they echo the voice of God.

The mountains always feel like they are saying, no matter how long I've been away, we welcome you. We welcome you not because you bring us anything, but simply because you are here.

Find the places where you are welcomed simply because you are there. Find them every day. Maybe it's God, or writing, a quiet walk, or the ocean, or maybe it's baking a pie.

I don't know. Peace finds all of us in different places.

All I know is if you get to feeling like you're searching for peace and not finding it, it's possible you're not looking in the places where peace will find you.

So I encourage you to stop looking for peace, and start looking for the places where peace will find you.