Hey, I’m Addison. You’re reading Bigger Than Me, a newsletter about mastering the skill of compassion. Sign up or scroll to the good stuff.

Friday mornings are hectic in our household.

My wife and I wrangle our three little kids—ages five, two, and one—through the chaos of a toy-strewn downstairs for their morning breakfast. My wife, now five months pregnant, moves slower, but we manage to get everyone into the kitchen.

I start the coffee maker while I rub my eyes, silently grateful that my wife’s nausea has finally subsided enough for us to enjoy coffee again. As I pour the first cup, something on the ceiling catches my eye—a big yellow stain.

“Do you see that?” I ask, pointing up.

My wife glances at it. “Yup… better call a plumber,” she responds nonchalantly as she continues dividing fruit onto our kids’ plates.

A flood of stressful memories rushes back. It’s the same spot as last year’s leak, the one that led to discovering a football-sized mushroom and extensive mold that shut down our half our house for weeks.

The thought of going through that chaos again makes me wince.

I sip my coffee, burning my tongue. “Please don’t let this be another two-week ordeal,” I mutter as I head upstairs to make the call.

I was right in one regard. It didn’t take two weeks to fix everything.

This time it would take an entire month.

How do you hold on to peace when life makes every attempt to steal it?

In the past, my go-to tactic when feeling overwhelmed was to try and control everything. 

For the negative things, I’d cut down on whatever I didn’t like that was draining my time, money, or resources:

Then I’d take the resources I gained back and “reinvest” them into whatever made me happy.

This served as an okay tactic for me at times during my single years.
Quite honestly, most of my problems then were self-inflicted so it worked a treat.

Since I directly controlled these factors, reducing my intake was simpler than increasing output. It was always easier, for example, to not eat a cheeseburger or not spend as much money rather than go for a mile run or pursue a pay raise.

However, after getting married, having kids, and running a business I realized this one-size-fits-all technique for securing peace of mind stops working for a lot of things.

I found that when life was chaotic, after eliminating the obvious stuff, I would still feel terrible anxiety and fear. Having nowhere else to borrow from, I would then end up unknowingly checking out during time spent with family or procrastinating crucial tasks just to secure moments where I could breathe.

Consciously I knew these distractions didn’t work, but I’d still found myself turning to them time and time again.

I had been looking for my circumstances to orchestrate a state of peace, while I needed a peace that was unmoved amid my conditions.

I think of a quote by John Shedd that perfectly summarizes this idea:

I was “safe”, for example, spending extra time on the phone while in the bathroom to gain a breather from the overwhelming stress of life, but everything suffered more because of it. 

“Shoring up” in that space was like a ship captain seeking to control his ship’s exposure to the weather by remaining docked, instead of trusting in its construction while sailing.

True peace had to become a part of my very soul.

From the moment we found that leak, the month of August became a battle for us.

We dealt with constant work on our home to fix mold issues, the kids being stressed (us too), insurance failing to cover any of the repair work for reasons too complicated to explain here, work stress, personal family loss, and more.

It felt like an unrelenting storm sending wave after wave.

It was a month that would have quickly broken me in the way much smaller things easily did in my past.

Here’s the crazy part with it all though: I was surprisingly okay.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn't all roses.

I felt like my body was ping-ponging from checking out to high-intensity flight or fight mode the whole time, and my mind felt like butter scraped over too much bread.

Still, though, I was at peace.

This shift from peace being circumstantial to an internal reality has only come about in recent years due to one revelation:

There can be no peace without trust.

Establishing peace requires us to trust that things will be okay. Without the assurance of making it out of these stretches of life in one piece, our peace of mind is shattered and we end up waiting for the “other shoe” to drop at all times.

This was my life. My trust in being okay on the other side of hardship only went as far as my confidence in my ability to control things. However, when life got more complicated and I finally realized it was impossible to control everything, I’d fall into hopelessness.

This would result in me “waiting out the storm” by checking out until conditions got better.

The only way I became able to face the things in life was by learning I could trust someone greater than myself to see me through it all.

Much like the joy I used to relentlessly chase but never find, peace came after turning my life over to Christ.

He not only enabled me to be able to handle the storm but promised to never leave me during it.

As He has demonstrated all throughout this last month and countless times before, putting my trust in Him – the Prince of Peace – means no circumstance can steal it.

Until next time,
Addison