These days I have to fight for quiet and peace for my soul.

I suppose that is a pattern that humans have been practicing for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. Fight. For peace.

This is something that my atheist, liberal, borderline Socialist co-worker and friend does not understand. She understands peace, of course. But she would completely eschew fighting as a necessary path to peace.

She and her husband quietly separated when things got hard. They still haven't gotten around to the divorcing. Meanwhile for the past twenty years, they both date and live on opposite continents while their daughters become grown women. It is a mistake in thinking that the path of least resistance is synonymous with peace. It is not.

Peace is what comes after you have forged a path. Peace is not happenstance. It is labor and delivery. It is making something holy. It is setting something apart from the nature of this world and dedicating it to the nature of Another world. It is deliberate and it requires sweat and marrow and sacrifices.

The deepest peace in my marriage comes from those places where we have bled.
The most quiet and careful of my writing and my restoration comes when I finish all my chores, get the kids to bed the way they need, clean up my house, love my husband recklessly and seek the wisdom of some Words. If I get distracted, if I rest for a even moment, my peace will be snatched up by the busyness of this life, it will be stolen by the needs of my family, it will be swallowed by the quickening sun, my graying hairs, the growth of all my weeds.

I own my peace. It was given to me as a Gift.
And I fight for it.
I protect it.
I nurture it.