Serene

Grant Me the Serenity

I have always been jealous of women whose faith is serene. I knew a woman when I was in high school; she was the mother of one of my friends, who contracted a rare form of cancer. I saw her accept the diagnosis, fight for all she was worth, and recover from the crippling disease. She is now a beautiful, healthy woman again. Throughout the entire process, she always seemed full of faith, calm, and completely waiting on God. I have a friend whose husband was called to his military duty as a marine in Iraq shortly after their first child was born. She rallied her friends and family around to support her while she raises the little one, and again, she seems serene as she plays with her tiny baby girl, serene in her faith that no matter what happens, God is right next to her, holding “the whole world in His hands.”
I don’t think I have ever been serene. Not when I was a child, with my rambunctious spirit and bouncing curls, not as a teenager, determined to get the best grades, save for college, and be a strong leader in the youth group. Not in college, when my determination grew even more, to graduate at least a semester early, to earn not one degree but two, to hold two or three jobs at a time, and to become a visible and effective leader of the student body. Not in my marriage, where I discovered that mortgages can be stressful, houses tend toward disrepair, and compromise is a necessary component. Not in my career, where I am always committed to doing my job better than expectations and where I always push the bar a step higher, yet where I find few employers are willing to give me a chance to explore my full potential.
Serene, sometimes I think, is incompatible with me. With the economy in America. With the busyness that we are raised to launch towards, the immediate satisfaction we strive for. Serene sounds too much like an old novel, with a picnic near a lake, swans floating nearby, where there are no cars breaking down or bosses getting angry or trying to survive on oatmeal and bananas. Serene no longer exists in the 21st century, as far as I can tell.
But then I open my Bible. My Bible is full of strife, just like my life. In the first year of marriage alone, I have been unemployed twice, my husband once, we have totaled my husbands car, bought a house, replaced a dryer, water heater, ceiling fan, several parts of my rapidly aging car, and eaten a lot of hot dogs in an effort to stay afloat financially. We have no t.v., try to shower at the gym to save our water bill, and my husband has become Mr.-Fix-It in times when we find a gaping hole in the side of our house or when my car breaks. In the Bible, most strife is worse than my economic and personal struggles. David had the man who was once like a father to him out to kill him. He became king but committed adultery, lost the respect of two of his sons, and let his daughter be raped with no punishment for her attacker. Elijah wandered alone, feeling abandoned, in a land riddled with drought, knowing that he was one of the last prophets. Judas betrayed the one man who saved us all, and died a horrible death. Job suffered endless trouble, all for his faith in the one God.
But unlike in my life, the Bible is also full of serenity. Of peace. Of those who knew that there was a time for strife and a time for blessing. Of Faith. Hebrews has an entire chapter dedicated to those who showed that they were faithful even when they did not understand anything going on around them. Take Rahab, who let strangers from another land into her house inside the city walls of the fortress of her country, hid them from the authorities, and then lowered them outside the city walls in a basket so that they would be safe. I bet she was serene during that entire event.
In the Bible, strife and serenity seem to go hand in hand to those who carry faith in God. In Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, he writes of Jeremiah 17:7 “But blessed is the man who trusts me, God, the woman who sticks with God. They’re like trees replanted in Eden, putting down roots near the rivers – never a worry through the hottest of summers, never dropping a leaf, Serene and calm through droughts, bearing fresh fruit every season.”
I want to be a tree that doesn’t worry. A tree that no matter where I am or what I’m going through, I feel like I am in paradise, and I know that even though I can’t see water right now and I haven’t seen it in a long time because of a drought, that it will come. That I will never have to go a season alone, that I will always bear fruit as I trust in God. That strife, though I use it to become worrisome and restless, is supposed to build faith in my Maker so that I can come to embody that word that seems so foreign: serene.
God grant me the serenity….Amen.