For Today -- Inner Peace

Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.  Do not lose your inward peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.  If you find that you have wandered away from the shelter of God, lead your heart back to Him quietly and simply.   -- St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)

I am feeling rested, peaceful even, although there is much to do to get ready for Christmas and travel to be with family. 

One sign that my spirit is not as calm as I could be is my thoughts are darting around my mental to-do list:  wrap presents, make my Dad's favourite treat, pick up a few last things at the grocery store, tidy the house, laundry, blah, blah, blah.  Breathe.  Just for now, I am focusing on my recovery, my tools of reading and writing.  I am at rest.

The reading this morning also says:

Stuffing down anxiety and fear with food gives an illusion of calm, but food as an anesthetic has the shortest lifespan of all the addictive substances.

How, then, do I maintain inward peace?  The same way I remain abstinent -- by giving everything to God:  my fears, my worries, my life.  I abandon all efforts to control, to force life to conform to my will.  And I rest as peacefully as an infant in its mother's arms.

It is from this place of peace and rest that I can focus on what is truly important.  Even the mundane things that have to get done are important but not all at once.  Some of the reminders that help me are:  first things first; one thing at a time; one day at a time.  It is having a scattered mind, whirling with all the things not done, not perfect, that helps drives me to anxiety and excess food.  And so I breathe.  I rest. 

This morning's quote from St. Francis de Sales prompted me to look him up (of course!).  He was a very well Jesuit educated French / Italian nobleman, a lawyer, priest and author, and later a Catholic saint who lived in Lyon, France in the late 15th and early 16th century.  Some of his thoughts that have received wide currency include:

• Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself.
• When we discover that our lute is out of tune we must neither break the strings nor throw the instrument aside.
• If we really knew ourselves, instead of being astonished at finding ourselves on the ground, we should marvel how we sometimes manage to remain upright.
• The measure of love is to love without measure.
• Blessed are the hearts that bend; they shall never be broken.
• Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy.  Then a full hour is needed.

Indeed.  I enter this day with a peaceful heart.