What is Tranquility?

Tranquility: quality or state of being tranquil; calmness; peacefulness; quiet; serenity.

I don't often achieve tranquility, don't even usually focus on achieving it, however; there are some seasons of life when that seems to be the only thing you crave. The calm, peacefulness, quiet, serenity of heart and mind. Why does it seem that our lives get so busy we forget about what peace and tranquility are all about and how vital they are to our soul? I think my soul gets dry and shriveled up when peace is missing from my life. When things are out of order in my head, my heart, my life, my peacefulness seems to drain out a bit at a time until I realize there is this dry empty ache of tension and worry where my peace used to live.

I've never had a green thumb like most people in my family, mine is a slight brownish color that tends to be detrimental to greenery. It's not that I'm not nurturing or that I don't care, I just find myself busy and distracted by things in my life that I forget to give them the appropriate attention they require to thrive. This is kind of like peace - when I get too busy and distracted, it withers away and when I realize I can't find anything but a dried up remnant of it, I have to start all over cultivating it.

Cultivating peace and tranquility are not easy, at least, not for me. I am one of those "OCD-ish" type organizer/planner type personalities. I need to plan things out, know what my schedule is, know where I'm at in my life, how far along my goal plan I am, etc. Some changes I make myself as the need arises, but change thrust upon me without notice can throw me off, and cause my budding peace to get bombarded by the inclement weather of my changing forecast.

At this particular time in my life, I seem to be in a season of changes thrust upon me, rather than changes I'm choosing. After a while I begin to feel helpless, like a shipwreck survivor tossed around a vast ocean in a very small lifeboat. While I know that everything going on around me and in my life is all very small, and all contained in the Palm of His Hand, sometimes I forget that when I'm holding on to my very small lifeboat in the middle of a very large wave of change - all things I have no control over.

It is not easy for me to not be in control of my situations, where I am in my life, what choices I have...it's hard for me to just let it all go and let Him take it all. I know down deep that I don't really have control over anything in my life anyway, but in some seasons in our life it seems that we have a moderate amount of control, decisions we make put things in place, we follow certain paths with certain outcomes, we make choices, and get the expected outcomes.

Unfortunately, this is not the season my life seems to be in at this time. Perhaps this is not so unfortunate, perhaps this is another of life's lessons, passed on to me from God's loving Hands to help me. To teach me something that I've been to busy to learn, or perhaps to nurture peace and help it grow in my heart again.

Some mornings I wake up and feel useless, without knowing in which direction to make the next step. Sometimes I allow myself to have a pity party - which always produces a very small turnout, although they say Misery loves company, apparently "Mr. M" seems to enjoy mine exclusively, and doesn't need anyone else to make the pity party complete. For some reason this little party of ours never makes me feel better, and I really get tired of him showing up, but some times he's the only one who does, so I just let him in and we have the same old pity party all over again.

I'm really tired of "Mr. M", and I'm really tired of hosting parties all the time.....I need a break. I need to catch a break! People ask what I'm up to these days, (the days since my "involuntary sabbatical"), and I have absolutely nothing to tell them. I have always believed that I could manage - no matter what happened, I could always figure out how to fix things. I'm a fixer, I am a do-er, I can't sit still when there are things to be done. But right now, I'm being forced to be still. It doesn't matter how much I travel, talk on the phone, distract myself with friends, books, or movies, the fact is, I have no options right now, other than to learn to be still. Perhaps this is the only way I am able to learn the lesson that this season of my life has presented me. Maybe learning to be still IS the lesson, but whatever it is, I trust that it's something I need to learn for the next phase of my life, whatever that is.

The Serenity Prayer has always comforted me, and while it isn't based in scripture as is the Lord's Prayer, embracing those words with sincerity makes it as sincere a prayer as any other. So, for this season in my life, when peace seems to be something I can't quite grasp and cultivate in my soul, I know that this is a temporary situation, a season that will end, and no matter how big the storm, how windy the change, how strong my feeling of helplessness, this too shall pass, and I will have grown stronger, learned more about myself, and the things that bring me peace, and will have reorganized and set my priorities so that peace is habitating in my life once again.