TRUE Peace this Advent Season
by Toni Nieuwhof
How to Find Peace in the Midst of Your Crisis
How will you remember 2020? For real? There’s been so much disruption, dislocation and confusion, and sadness. This has been a year where I’ve wrestled for peace, and honestly, I’m still coming to terms with what the Advent season will probably look like.
Although this year has been like no other, for me and perhaps you, it’s not the only year of crisis. Let me take you back a few years to when I struggled not with a global calamity, but a personal one.
When one of my sons was in kindergarten, one morning I was shocked by an oversized dark purple bruise on the side of his abdomen. As I asked him how in the world he got a bruise that serious, he wiped a finger just under his eyebrow and left a trail of tiny bruises. Fear gripped my chest and squeezed tight as I stared at the reddish streak over his eye. My mind leapt to the worst-case scenario – that he has a blood- born cancer. I did what any mom in shock would do. I gave him a bath before we headed to the hospital. I guessed we would be there awhile.
When we got there, the blood tests were drawn, and soon enough the pediatrician weighed in. “Mrs. Nieuwhof, your son’s blood sample showed that he’s seriously deficient of platelets (needed for blood clotting). In fact, his platelet count is zero. He needs to stay in bed and not do anything that might give rise to a risk of bleeding. We’ll give him a series of intravenous treatments, and we expect that his platelet count will rise in a week or two. In the meantime, no hard foods like toast, no toothbrushes – nothing that might cause him to bleed. I can’t stress this enough. We need to make sure nothing triggers a bleed because we might not be able to stop it. We suspect this will be temporary, but we don’t know for sure. Chances are it’s not cancer, but we can’t rule that out.”
Within a few short hours, I, the one who had all the pieces of our family life pretty much fitted together, was in pieces. I couldn’t even order coffee for the nurses at Tim Hortons without dissolving into a puddle on the counter. I had lived my life pretty much self-sufficient up to that point. I could manage our family’s needs. I had enough peace and order to survive on. Yes, I had my faith in Jesus.
to be truthful, my faith was more like a thought bubble balloon that I kept tethered to a string. It wasn’t in any condition to bear the full weight of this fear and grief.
What happened in those days after my son’s diagnosis led to a completely different picture of dependency in our family’s everyday life. It took lots of people to assemble all the pieces. We depended on the pediatrician for advice on what to do next when the treatments weren’t working. We depended on nurses for the strategies and supplies to care for our son in his fragile condition. We depended on family members to care for our other son while we were bound to the hospital bed-side. We depended on the beautiful community of people who tried to help by bringing meals and cards and prayers so as to lift us out of overwhelm.
Before this time, I placed my confidence in my independent kind of life. Sure, I had friends I would hang out with, but at the core, it was me and my Jesus balloon. I held everyone else out at arm’s length, close enough that I wouldn’t feel completely alone, but far enough away to feel safely self-sufficient. Unbeknownst to me, my Creator conceived a far better plan.
There is a powerful peace, not shame, in dependence. Upon others. On God.
No parent hears the life-threatening diagnosis for their child without losing all semblance of peace. But God in his flowing grace and all-consuming love desires peace for us so much, he put his own son in that life-threatening place. The world-transforming birth of his Precious One is God’s holding out for us on open hands a peace that is supernatural.
Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”
When we drove to the city for the cancer test I so dreaded, I was no longer clinging to my faith on a string. An other-worldly peace moved into my soul that day and carried me.
Jesus not only bore the full weight, he lifted me with a peace I could not explain.
As you survey the turmoil that this year has brought, are you depending - really resting your full weight - on God’s miracle? Is it time to release your tethered faith and inhale God’s breath?
Cry out for peace to abide in you. Jesus the Prince of Peace was birthed on this earth to fill your soul with freedom from despair.
I pray Jesus inflates you, carries you, envelops you in peace to celebrate his coming with joy.
Toni Nieuwhof is author of the book, Before You Split (releases Jan 12, 2021), former divorce attorney and co-host of the Smart Family Podcast. She is married to Carey Nieuwhof, influential church leader, author and podcaster. Toni loves to spend time outdoors with Carey, family and all their backyard visitors.
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