The Bond of Peace (The Seventh Sunday of Epiphany)

She doesn't wait for me to be ready for her questions. As soon as the water glasses have been set down in front of us, she launches. "How are you going to prevent this pattern from reoccurring through the rest of your life?" she asks me, leaning forward into the question. "What?" I half laugh, half sigh. "That's your opening question?" 

But she is serious, and I watch as her love for me, and her worry, and her listening pour out onto the table between us. It is hard, we admit to ourselves and each other. It is hard, and real, and it can't continue. It's not sustainable. I'm rushing, anxious, too tired and never quite peaceful. And as I talk, and trace my finger around the rim of my glass, unwilling to meet her eyes, I can feel the truth pulling up a chair next to us. She's right, you know, it says. She's right about you. 

The miracle of time with my mentor is that she betrays how much she has studied me in the questions she asks. She can preface any question with what she knows I'll be thinking in my head. She can stop me and tell me what I was going to say, and she's almost always right. She can look me in the eyes and tell me, "I know that you don't like this, but it's the truth." And she knows that I don't like it, and she also knows that I still want to hear it. 

We sit in the car on a side street eating cupcakes and talking about how I've changed in these four years. How time has done things inside me, how I've become a little more patient and a little more peaceful. I see a long road ahead. I see a long road of obedience, and submitting. I see a long road where I have to make hard choices and hear hard questions, where I don't get what I want and I say the word "no" and learn its consequences. I see a long road knocking at doors, and getting on my knees in the dirt, and doing the work. 

But you see, she sees that long road too. And she says she'll walk down some of it with me. It's not her road, it's not her journey, exactly. But she promises to be there, as I climb hills and scrape my knees and cry and laugh and pray. She promises to be here. 

This is the bond of peace we should pray for: that we would seek it together. That we would desire it, together. That we would hope in it. That we would rejoice to watch each other grow closer to Him, and encourage one another to seek Him, and trust that His peace is sufficient for us. 

This is the bond of peace: that along those long roads into our futures, we might long to become peaceful, and full of Him. 

This is the bond of peace: That you and I can sit in the car on the side street eating cupcakes and remembering how we've become the people we've become, and you will tell me the hard truth and I will listen to it, that you will be right about me, and I will submit to that. And that in it all, through it all, we meet Christ. 

Love,

Hilary