Are You At Peace?

(c) Staci Stallings, 2003

Everyone is working so hard these days. Getting ahead-that's what most people call it. We've got cell phones, palm pilots, laptops, beepers, and pagers so that we never have to be disconnected from the world. In fact, there's one commercial that shows a man sitting on a mountaintop next to a pristine lake in the middle of nowhere working on his laptop! The tagline says something like: Keeping you connected no matter where you are.

It's a nice idea really-being connected to our fellow beings on the planet all the time, being able to contact practically anybody anywhere any time. In theory it's a nice idea, but in reality, I think that all this busyness is really a mask for something deeper. Being able to "reach out and touch someone" can easily begin to take over every waking hour so that you increasingly do not have time to get in touch with yourself. And that's a problem.

In her book, "A Return to Love," Marianne Williamson talks about goals, but she doesn't jump on the "how-to and why-to" bandwagon that most inspirational authors do. What she says instead is that rather than praying for and focusing our energy on attaining goals that we've set, we should pray for and focus on being at peace no matter what happens.

She's not saying, "Sit on your tail, and do nothing." What she's saying is that because we inhabit such a small speck of this immense universe, we cannot possibly know what is truly best in a given situation. For example, say you want a job with XYZ Company, and you truly believe this job will make you happy-that it is the perfect job. So you pray really hard every night that you will get this job, and you do affirmations 100 times every night, "I will be hired by XYZ Company. I will be hired by XYZ..."

Chances are, because of the power of the mind, you will be hired by XYZ Company. However, as often happens, a year down the road you're miserable and you wish you had never heard of XYZ Company. Why? You got the goal. You got what you wanted. You got what you thought would make you happy. But you missed the opportunity to get what you really wanted, and that was peace about the situation of wanting to work for a great company.

You thought that getting that job would give you peace and happiness, and now you think you were wrong. Have you ever heard the saying, "Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it"? This is the lesson that saying is talking about. You are asking for what you think will make you happy instead of asking God to make you happy no matter what.

Grasping and truly implementing this lesson requires letting go and letting God take over. Trust to the nth degree. It is embodied in the saying a wise friend once told me: "In the end it will always be okay. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

So, pray for peace in your life. You never know. You just might get what you ask for.

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Love, joy, & peace for this beautiful day! Go out and enjoy God's gift to you which is this day!