The word peace is mentioned about 400 times in the Bible, depending on your translation. Peace is a fruit of the Spirit (Galations 5:22-23), and was used by Jesus as a greeting in the Bible. Peace be with you. I would like for my attitude when greeting others to be one of peace, and yet I feel so far from it many times. My family consists of myself, my husband, and my three boys-Devin (16), Kai (4), and Cruz (2). Like most families, we get caught up in the super speed of life. There is always somewhere to be, someone to drive somewhere, and a schedule to keep. When I walk into a room, I don't always feel like I am filling it with the peace of The Lord. Sometimes, I feel like I am sucking the peace right out of the room in my hurry to get somewhere. I am a list maker, and wake up almost every day writing down a list of things I want to get done. I love the sense of accomplishment when I mark off things from my list. That said, I have a hard time jumping from the speed of life, and the good feeling I get from accomplishing tasks, to just living in the moment and enjoying the peace God wants to bless me with by being present.
Recently, I felt challenged to pursue an atmosphere of peace in our home. Things too often seem rushed, and I find myself hurrying through moments that I should be making memories of. Specifically, at dinner. Our family dinners were hectic, not at all peaceful. I wanted to change that. My little guys had become impossibly picky. I was just trying to get thru dinner, and get it over with. It was a time to feed my family, or at least the ones that weren't refusing to even try a bite, and move on. Another chore off the to-do list for the day. One evening, while throwing out plates of untouched food, I felt God tapping my shoulder. He was reminding me of something I had been working on for over a year- to slow down. To live in the moment, and not be moving (in my mind) past the present and onto the next task for the day. Our pastor at church recently reminded us that we need to slow down our speed of life in order to invest in our most cherished relationships. Jesus was busy, yet Jesus never hurried. I was convicted.
My youngest, and most stubborn, can last throughout an entire meal without touching his food. He will usually play with it a little, but getting it to go in his mouth for even a single bite is not always on his list of things to accomplish for the day. Occasionally, he will decide he doesn't like his booster seat. He will make his little body as stiff as a board and scream in a desperate battle of the wills. It is amazing how strong he can be at just one year old! Sometimes, he will sit in the booster seat, but repeatedly pound his fork into the table like he is tenderizing meat until he gets corrected. After that, he then chooses to sit nicely with us, or, what he mostly chooses after being corrected, is he will cry for no apparant reason and has to be put in his crib for the remainder of the meal. Not exactly the picture of peace! And yet the Bible teaches us to have peace. 1 Peter 3:11 says to "seek peace and pursue it". We are challenged to ask for peace from God and seek it from being in His presence. We should not look to aquire peace from our situations or others around us. God doesn't teach us to look for peace by having a perfectly cooked meal, with perfectly behaved children. The level of peace in my home is determined by my dilligence to be filled by God's peace, and share it. I believe God wants us to know it is available, as long as we ask Him. I need to pursue peace every day, because it will not just suddenly slap me in the face and change the atmosphere in my home until I do.
I committed to seek to be filled with God's peace, and prayed for wisdom in sharing that spirit in my home. God was faithful to pour out his wisdom, and help me exactly the way I needed it, with an easy and uncomplicated solution. I felt like a simple change we could try was to move our food from the stove and put in on the table. This made a huge difference! We all started the meal at the same time, and were able to ask each other to pass things around. The communication was already better than when all the food was left on the stove! We could work on manners with please and thank you, and waiting your turn. An added and unexpected bonus was that watching people fill up their plates even helped my picky little eaters to want to be included and try new foods! If a plate of food is set in front of them, they can, in an instant, decide if it is something they will like or not. But if food is set around them, and they watch others filling their plates, they suddenly get an excitement to be included and ask for what is there. It was amazing! Having everyone sitting also gave us the opportunity to be more consistent with praying to thank God for the food. Then, we started thinking about anything poeple would get up for during the meal and have it on the table also. Napkins, drinks, salt and pepper, everything! It was all there to pass around and share. We try to spend the meal sharing a happy, sad, or mad moment from the day. It is sweet to hear my three year old ask my husband, "What made you happy today?" It is also nice to sit down and get an entire story from my teenager about his "happy" moment for the day as opposed to the one word answer I get when I ask Devin after school, "how was your day?" And he responds "Pretty good".
As a result of these small changes, my kids are starting to eat better, listen when others are speaking, ask and wait when they want something, and maybe even enjoy family dinners just a little. We still have meals that are, let's say, challenging. But, then there are those priceless times, when the meal actually does feel peaceful. When we can live in the moment of the meal, and slow down the speed of our day. Where one person talks at a time, and someone at the table is unusually quiet. I look over toward my youngest, and see him sitting nicely in his seat and folding his sweet little hands asking us to pray. Sometimes he does this two or three times during a meal! He loves to throw his hands up at the end and shout "Amen!" It is moments like that to help remind me what a blessing it is to slow down, be present and engaged, and pursue peace.
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