What Peace Really Felt Like

I remember going through a season in my life where it felt like everything was happening at once. You know the saying, when it rains, it pours.

I was unemployed at the time, trying to keep my baby in nursery while still searching for a job. And anybody who has ever seriously looked for employment knows that job searching becomes a full-time job within itself. Every day felt uncertain. I was trying to figure out how I was going to pay my mortgage, keep things together, take care of my responsibilities, and mentally hold myself together all at the same time.

It felt like life kept placing obstacle after obstacle in front of me.

During that season, I started taking what I called my prayer walks. They weren’t walks for exercise or weight loss. I wasn’t focused on calories or steps. Those walks became my time with The Lord. Sometimes early in the morning while the neighborhood was still quiet. Sometimes in the middle of the afternoon when life felt too heavy to sit still with. I would walk, pray, think, cry sometimes, and just talk to the Lord honestly about how overwhelmed I felt.

And even though I had all of these real problems surrounding me, something felt different internally.

I remember trying to make sense of it because I didn’t feel numb, and I didn’t feel disconnected. The problems were still there. The bills were still there. The uncertainty was still there. But deep down, I just knew everything was going to be okay. I knew it wasn’t going to be immediately but I knew it was coming eventually.

And while I was walking one day, the word “peace” came across my mind so clearly.

I cannot fully explain it, but it was almost like The Lord finally gave me a word for the space I had been sitting in.

Peace.

My life was still uncertain. The obstacles were still standing in front of me, and everything had not fully worked itself out yet. But somewhere along the way, fear stopped feeling heavier than my faith.

Peace did not remove my problems. Not nary one of them. They were all still there. It simply changed the way I was carrying them. I was still walking through difficult circumstances, but I was no longer emotionally drowning in them.

That’s when I realized peace is not always floating on cloud 9. You’re not going to see rainbows and unicorns. For me, peace felt like calmness.

I remember all the noise that was going on in my life at the time. The stress. The pressure. The uncertainty. It felt like every area of my life needed my attention all at once. But somehow, in the middle of all of that chaos, everything internally started feeling quiet. The noise that once felt so loud in my mind almost became nonexistent.  And even though I knew I still had things to figure out and responsibilities to get in order, I never completely lost perspective that eventually things were going to work themselves out.

I just remember walking through those seasons feeling strangely at peace because I knew The Lord was real. So, I continued to pray. I continued to study my scriptures. I continued to trust God even when I could not fully see how everything was going to come together.

And little by little, it did.

I ended up finding a job a few weeks, maybe a few months later, and it gave me the flexibility I needed during that season of my life. The woman who kept my daughter at the nursery continued helping me while I was trying to get back on my feet. I remember telling her, “I’ll pay you, I promise” because I was going to take her out, and owner of the daycare was like “no, keep her here, I have been blessed, I’m okay.” Her kindness meant everything to me. Till this day, I just love her. I had fallen behind on my mortgage, but eventually I caught up on that too.

Nothing happened overnight. Everything came together piece by piece. One prayer at a time. One open door at a time. One act of grace at a time.

And looking back now, I think The Lord allowed me to be in a position where He was the only person I truly had to depend on. But while I was praying, trusting Him, and continuing to put in the work, He also placed the right people in my life at the right time to help me make it through that season. When I think back on that time in my life, that is what peace felt like to me. Just a deep calmness in the middle of uncertainty and the quiet reassurance that somehow, despite everything surrounding me, life was still going to come together the way it was supposed to and it did.