The Fruit of the Spirit that Can’t be Disguised
Have you ever had ‘the butterflies in your stomach’? I know you have. Maybe it’s happened to you when you met someone new and beautiful. Maybe it was when you were waiting to open a present. Maybe it was when you were about to get out of your seat and perform.
I once got ‘the butterflies’ talking to someone new and mistook it for some kind of divine connection. Actually, let’s be honest… lots of someones. I love to meet new people and make a quick connection. If we’re being really honest, when I was dating I was in search of this ‘butterfly effect’.
I remember telling my mother about the butterflies of that one time… the way I felt almost buzzed and jittery with wonder when talking with them. My mother cautioned me that could be something besides happy butterflies.
Of course, I told her she was wrong and didn’t understand.
And, of course, she was right.
And then, much later in life, I read that what we experience as ‘the butterflies’ can actually be anxiety. Our body isn’t gleefully excited as much as it is trying to give us a warning sign.
Don’t get me wrong: sometimes the nervous fluttering in our gut showcases our happy excitement! But sometimes, we need to carefully interpret what our gut is telling us.
As a believer in true, magical, once-in-a-lifetime love, I was always expecting to feel that starstruck, fluttery high when I met my forever partner. And when Wade walked in the door and I laid eyes on him for the first time in our adult lives… that did not happen.
Instead, something better did. It it took me until later to even recognize what I was feeling enough to name it:
Peace.
Wade does make me feel giddy. Like, laugh-because-you-think-you-might-burst-from-love-or-at-least-pee-your-pants kind of giddy. And we don’t, erm, have a problem in the passion department. But predominantly what I feel from him and with him is peace.
And let me promise you: peace is not boring. It’s invigorating and life-giving. It’s a little preview of heaven on earth.
With a peaceful person, instead of wondering if you are relationally safe, you get to wonder about fun things. Like the future. Like creative ways to love. Peace lets you learn a person instead of just how to exist with them.
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Here’s what I want to say: I’ve probably been asked a thousand times and wondered myself a thousand more, “How will I know when I have peace? Is this peace?”
So let me say something annoying and then something blunt. When you have peace, you know it. And if you’re wondering if you have peace, you don’t.
When peace walks in the door, she never pretends to be someone she’s not. You might mistake others for her, but when you finally meet her, she won’t have to introduce herself.
Love is faked and bought all the time.
Joy can be confused with excitement.
Patience can be traded in for resignation or acquiescence.
Kindness can actually just be forced niceties.
Goodness gets credited when really it’s just something I agree with.
Faithfulness can be feigned when it’s actually the inability to change.
Gentleness is named in the place of weakness.
Self-control gets mocked by cowardice.
But peace? She can’t be disguised.
Sometimes we play pretend peace. We might feel false security with people who bless our sin. But at the end of a season, either Peace or anxiety will show up and take off the masks of imposters like the end of a Scooby Doo episode.
I think sometimes we say peace when we really mean tolerance. Tolerance is certainly a tool that can help bring peace around. But peace is not just the lack of strife or conflict. It’s not just putting up with others and not killing them.
Peace is the presence of safe well-being for flourishing. It’s not enough for peace that I do you no harm. Peace also wants me to wish and work for your good.
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Peace usually does not fall out of the sky. Most often it has to be worked for, searched for. I memorized Psalm 34:14 first in Spanish. Busca la paz y síguela. Those verbs gave me a such a strong image. Seek peace and pursue it. Search for peace and follow after it. Peace gets to be the leading lady.
As someone who is no stranger to panic attacks and anxiety meds, I know that anxiety is having her moment. It’s my opinion that this is both a good and a bad thing. We have to be honest about the state of the world and how we’re handling things. We have to make sure the shaming stigma of anxiety gets buried six feet down. Some of us need a little chemical calm, and I’m a big fan of getting that help. But sometimes we accidentally glorify anxiety. We can’t swing the pendulum that far.
Would it be weird if I said I don’t think anxiety is the opposite of peace? It can be an enemy, for sure. But sometimes they can dwell together if Peace is put in charge. Peace has to be the decision maker.
Maybe an example is best to make this argument. When I decided to move to Georgia, there were dynamics of this decision that caused me anxiety. Leaving my job, leaving my friends, being farther from my parents. The logistics and details of moving—I mean, ew. But there came a point when I knew that if I stayed, peace wouldn’t stay with me. The anxieties were challenges worth overcoming on the way to peace. I had sought peace. Now I had to follow her.
The opposite of peace is confliction-- some kind of misalignment of heaven and earth that brings hell. Frequently we personally experience it as uncertainty’s lies. This often comes when we have to make a decision and we think everything will be ruined if we choose wrongly.
If you don’t say yes to this relationship, you’ll be alone forever.
If you pick the wrong opportunity, you’ll miss out on God’s plan.
If you tell them the truth, they’ll hate you.
Uncertainty followed by lies.
I think peace comes from knowing right from wrong. You can still experience anxiety even when you know what is right. But when you can recognize truth, peace is never far behind.
On both a personal level and also on the public level, peace and justice are always necessary partners. This is why Psalm 85 says that “righteousness and peace have kissed.” They belong together.
Truly there can be no peace where there is no justice. Only that which is right can bring about feeling right.
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I know we are afraid to be wrong. Sometimes you honestly don’t know what to do and can’t find out until you just make a decision. Other times, you know what’s right. Other times, you may not know what is right but you can feel what is wrong. Peace will always take the path towards righteousness. And she’s the best travel partner.
If the Lord don’t come and the creek don’t rise,
Casey
