How To Make Peace Appear in Rocky, Stormy Places

Peace is Hilton Head Island on an October morning. A sunrise run along the beach. A kaleidoscope of colors filling footprints.

Peace is toes in a mountain creek. Skipping stones. Drinking sun.

Peace is a velvet loveseat and natural light. The ruffed edge of a white curtain. Colored-organized books.

Peace is a vanilla bean candle and notes on a violin. Still-warm sourdough melting Irish butter. A bonfire and hours to chat. Tea poured hot into porcelain cups. A crackling fire and turned book pages. Chalk paint, soft and smooth.

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Peace is more than an allure for an Enneagram 9. It’s like air to the lungs. Native language. Coming home.

You don’t just live for the moments that feel cozy and comfortable, you go to great lengths to create—and protect—peace. That’s why you stubbornly insist you have no preference, tell yourself to let it go instead of being offended, sit down to eat only after you’re sure everyone has everything they could need. You’re trying to create the environment where you can feel most at rest. One without tension or disappointment.

On the outside, you appear even-keeled. Collected. The last one to get flustered. The ready-encourager. The steady friend. But sometimes the image you curate isn’t exactly what you feel inside.

As much as you encourage others, you take a different tone with yourself, inside your head. You self-criticize, second-guess, overanalyze. So you look for peace in beautiful things—both natural and created—to still the loud inside. 

It works for a while, but you can chase external peace all day and still miss the kind that’s a haven in the middle of the hard things. The kind that’s there when you wake up and still there when you fall asleep. The kind you receive rather than work to keep. The kind that stills your soul.

Truth is, peace is most tangible in the thin places, as the Celtics call it, where heaven kisses earth and God is undeniably near. Sure, the awe-inspiring and serene makes that space feel paper thin. But thin places** are a mixture of what hurts and what heals.

You need the things that make you cry to know down in your bones that God is here. The things that drop you to your knees to find the peace God gives even when you can’t control an ounce of what’s pressing heavy on your heart.

And maybe you’re looking for this kind of peace too. You want more than a Band-Aid for the discord inside. More than something that slips away at the slightest hint of conflict. Walks away at the onset of lengthy uncertainty. Ebbs in the absence of a Pinterest-worthy environment.

More Than Feel-Good Blessings

If you and I had lived a couple of thousand of years ago, I bet we’d have followed this ache for deep, overriding peace to a grassy slope where Jesus stood teaching. We’d have settled quickly into the little open spot closest to Jesus because we’d want to hear His words in His very own voice. Something you couldn’t quite describe happened every time you heard Him speak and you wanted to know why.

Jesus talked of the supreme happiness that stems from knowing God is God and we are not. The most comforting news that God-planted longings have a God-written ending. The blessing of paring gentleness with flexibility, craving righteousness, bringing heaven to the dirt and thirst of earth, finding vision clarity through heart purity. And now He talks of peace, and your heart melts a little.

Like the other Beatitudes, this isn’t a feel-good message. It cuts past preconceptions and inhibitions. Challenges us to look into a mirror and let go of what doesn’t make us more like Him. Invites a heart-level re-write. Reroutes our course.

Embedded in every blessing is an invitation to join God where He’s at work in the lives of others. Carry His light to hope-void places. Fill the earth with God-directed praise. Meet real needs with love and practical mercy.

The blessing Jesus spoke over peace-makers in Matthew 5:9 is NOT

Blessed are those who never say no.

Stay calm no matter what.

Keep everyone else happy.

Tune out the noise.

Throw themed parties.

Recreate the best of Pinterest in their homes.

Nope. Jesus said, “How joyful you are when you make peace. For then you will be recognized as a true child of God” (TPT).

Jesus calls us to Himself, the Author of peace, because that’s how we learn His nature. And then He gives us a responsibility. Extend peace. Make it appear in places that are desolate. Rocky. Stormy.

This is a different kind of peace than one you can curate or control. It’s the sort that gets into the messiest parts of our lives that we’d rather not show. Reckons with false narratives we hold too tight. Dissolves our cancel culture reactions. Breaks down walls and builds people up.

“Our reconciling ‘Peace’ is Jesus,” according to Ephesians 2:14 TPT. When Jesus shows up, differences that push people apart lose power. He is the magnetic pull that unites, heals, restores.

Like Dad, Like Kid

As God’s children, we carry the essence of His reconciling peace everywhere we go. We’re the “visible display of the infinite, limitless riches of his grace and kindness” (Eph 2:7 TPT), “his poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny he has for each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One” (Eph. 2:10 TPT).

In the same way that children resemble their birth parents, it’s natural for God’s children to talk, think, and look a lot like Him. This is what Jesus means when He says we will be recognized as His children. The resemblance will be obvious. Undeniable.

God promises joy. There’s no joy quite like walking in sync with Christ, bringing Peace Himself into our conversations and daily interactions.

It’s a get-to mission. A joy-filled overflow of knowing God as Best Friend, Constant Companion, Abba Father.

Prayer for True Peace

Here’s my prayer, lifted straight out of Psalms 86:11. Because peace-loving Enneagram 9s have at least as much to learn about true peace as anyone else. Because I need to remember that peace isn’t in the things that give me pause but the One who gives me a mission.

Maybe David’s words are for you today too. Could we pray it together?

Teach me more about you, how you work and how you move, so that I can walk onward in your truth until everything within me brings honor to your name.

TPT

May we bring Jesus’s reconciling peace into our conversations, both in person and online.

May we be peace-makers in our homes, neighborhoods, and communities.

May we wear the essence of Jesus like perfume everywhere we go.

** Need a place to name your thin places? Grab Jennifer Dukes Lee’s guided journal, Stuff I’d Only Tell God, and fill out page 106.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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