Sunday Afternoon Tea - Searching for Peace, Finding Sanctuary

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22, 23 KJV

 
Everything I knew as normal came crashing down the day my father's heart stopped beating. Childhood abruptly came to an end. Innocence ripped from my young life as death formed a hole in my heart, never to be filled by any human.  In many ways, a death of family as I had known it.  Life would never be the same.

I was broken.  Very broken... and broken people are shattered vessels.  Even when they come to know The Lord and His salvation, as He puts them back together... they daily leak their peace.  Much like a dropped teacup carefully glued and put back together, scars remain... cracks can be seen.

I know we have the Prince of Peace living within in the form of the Holy Spirit (and I often write that Peace is a Person).  But our bodies and souls and thoughts and memories... however redeemed... are still of this broken world.

My life has been a search for peace and calm and security... and sanctuary.

While at times I have found great peace when walking in nature or sitting beside the water, I am not a camping out kind of girl.  I adore movies and TV shows about people who move to the mountains or the wilderness but to be honest... I'd rather just visit.

I have long found peace in the pages of books, since the days of my youth when I would hide under the branches of a willow tree or sit upon a quilt under a fruit tree (I do seem to have a thing for trees) or just wonder the bookstore perusing titles and opening pages to the aroma of a new book.  But one cannot live in books forever. Meals must be cooked, dishes washed, and clothes made clean again.

Broken people... those who daily leak their peace... need to actually abide in an environment conducive to that peace.  Which is why I write so much about rooms and houses and books about such places.  We were all created for Beauty.  We were born in a paradise.  The very soil which God used to form Adam was garden dirt.

We all... as I have written before... hear those echoes of Eden.  We feel them reverberating in every beat of our heart and every step we take throughout the days and years He has given us to walk the planet. 

Somewhere within our DNA exists the memory of... Perfect Beauty... Perfect Joy... Perfect Peace.

And while I believe every person has that yearning within, those of us who have been greatly broken... those who are shattered vessels... need to have that Beauty to keep at an even keel.

It is not always easy.  The menfolk in my life tended to be loud and boisterous.  There was once a young boy so rambunctious that his mother found peace only in a hot bath filled with bubbles and a book and an icy drink sipped slowly behind the locked doors of the bathroom.  Which is why many of my favorite books from that era are water stained.

There have been instances when peace came only when one could slip away from the house to a quiet coffee shop, once again with a book, ... sipping good coffee... pondering.  Finding serenity in the midst of others reading, writing, chatting, watching their screens on tablets and laptops and phones. 

I seem to be more sensitive these past years to those things that rob my peace, take away joy, and plant seeds of anxious thoughts.  There has been an overwhelming need to create places of peace... places of Sanctuary.  His Presence, His Word, and my surroundings coming together to bring with them a strengthening of the spirit... and calm to the soul.

Even the smallest house or apartment or room can have a few houseplants and candles and books and good smells coming from the kitchen.  Music in the background that we find lovely.  A soothing landscape on the wall.  Perhaps a needlework project resides in a basket or sheet music to play on the piano.

Always for me a beloved pet to cuddle as we sigh and ponder and think deeply of the promises of His Word.  Before Eve, Adam's friends were those with fur and feathers.

So please understand when I write words about lovely spaces, I know true peace is in the Life, Death, and Resurrection of a Person.  For without Salvation there can be no real  true lasting serenity. 

But within the minutes and hours and days this world revolves around the sun... I need a Place.  Sanctuary.  With my tea and a little piece of chocolate or a couple cookies and my book and my comfy chair and a Maine Coon kitty. 

Perhaps my headphones will be necessary as those I live with are not always serene.    But I must have my own little corner of the world where I can go to be filled yet again with His Presence and Peace.

What about you?  If there is not a room, is there a corner of a room?  A chair?  A kitchen?  A Place that when you walk into it, you find the peace returning?  I hope so.  I pray there is.

For in a world where calm is increasingly difficult to find, we need our sanctuaries and our places.  Until that time when we go to the Place He went to prepare for us... where we will no longer leak peace.