Bring Peace to My Life

Life is a constant struggle to discover. The porblem is trying to figure out what you need to discover versus what you want to discover. I am a 24 year old woman. I am married to a handsome man who loves me with passion. I am the mother of a vivacious, fiery, two year old girl who thinks I am the sun and stars. I am a teacher who fights every day to teach my kids not only to be better readers and writers but how to be a decent human being. I am a daughter of two wonderful parents who have taught me that endurance and perseverance are skills that I will always need and how to learn them with grace.

I am writing because there is an ache in my heart(Figurative, not literal. I am not having a heart attack). I am not sure when or why it started but it is something I have come to notice during this summer break. It could come from a plethora of things such as money worries, job worries, family worries, eternal worries, and so on but I think it is because I am looking for something.

I was always taught that to change things or improve you need to set a goal. Goals need to have measurable steps. Yet I am coming to realize that my ultimate goal in live is to find peace and contentment with the choices and actions that I have in my life. How can you measure peace and contentment? Feelings are not quantifiable even though it is something that human beings have sought to measure from the beginning of time.

I think that peace and contentment come from a multitude of things but what is missing from my daily life is creation. I am not a crafts and scrap-booking kind of woman. I love reading. I love ideas. I love learning. I never feel more alive than when I am studying and learning which is why I loved college. It was an environment that burned my fires of creativity and learning. 

I loved living in Rexburg because of the learning environment it represents. Leaving that oasis of peace has been difficult for me. It has been a year since we have moved and life is radically different. My great aunt has written a blog called "Creating a Life You Love" and I have read it before and loved it. It was a mantra that I added to my life during my student teaching semester that I found changed my perspective of life.

I learned to create. I wouldn't consider myself a creative person(I am definitely no Aunt Allison), but I know that I can create.  There was this power that came from knowing that I can create a life that I love and wanted to live. Suddenly life zinged with promise and I looked forward to the next day and its surprises.

So I am going to seek this power of creating again. I am happy in life. I love my husband, daughter, family, and job. I am just looking for a way to make life sing with little more oomph.  I think my aunt said it best when she wrote: "I was slowly coming to embrace the understanding that both suffering and joy are part of the same whole. I began to drop my judgment about how I thought life should be and started trusting life as it is"(Allred). That is my trouble. I think about how life should be or what I want it to be. Day dreaming is a curse and a necessity.

Day dreaming keeps us focused on our goals but it can also make one lose the value of the present. I am going to start doing what my aunt challenged her readers to do which is to "start trusting life as it is"(Allred). I am going to create.

Work Cited:

Allred, Tamera S. "The Story of Stillness." Web log post. Creating a Life You Love. N.p., 21 Dec. 2012. Web. 23 July 2014. <http://www.creatingalifeyoulove.net/the-story-of-the-stillness/>.