Chaos is inevitable, especially for people who set out to do good, powerful, world-changing things. Expect it. The wheels will come off. When they do, finding peace will be job #1.

But chaos stirs up all manner of malady – fear, bitterness, jealousy, addiction; a mountain of chaotic emotions. In the pain and fear that comes to the surface, our first impulse is to run, hide, escape.

Quit.

While finding peace in chaos is one of the most difficult endeavors, it’s not impossible. Following are a few things to consider.

Finding Peace in Someone Else’s Chaos

Chaos is never total chaos. In any situation, there are things we can’t control, and things we can. Focusing on the latter is fundamental to staying in the game. And the best way to figure out the difference between controllable and non-controllable things is to find a mentor who’ll walk with you in the trouble.

Few will take this advice. I usually don’t.

Somehow, in our culture, we’ve decided that we have to figure everything out by ourselves. We try to plow through our personal chaos with no experience whatsoever, and little strength, surrounded by people who’ve travelled down the road that’s currently kicking our ass.

Marriage trouble? Talk to someone who’s been married for 20+ years. Trouble raising your kids? Find someone who’s raised a couple of successful adults. Money trouble? Social problems? There are scads of people in this world who’ve navigated the same chaos you’re in, who’ve come out on the other side smiling, much stronger.

Don’t worry about where to find these people. If you’re convinced that you can’t move forward without their wisdom, you’ll find them.

Don’t look for someone who’ll tell you what you want to hear, or someone close to your age who shares your level of inexperience. Go for older, experienced, courageous people – family members, community leaders, priests, pastors, etc.

While it’s hard to ask for help, rest assured that anyone who’s navigated the agony of a life well-lived will be happy to come to your aid.

If you’re looking for peace, sitting with an older, wiser, stronger, more experienced human is the best place to start, so long as you can muster the humility to make the first move, and the courage to take their advice.

Chaos and the Truth about Your Future

“Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.” ~ Richard Rohr

Chaos is always temporary. Just as you can rely on your life being crazy at times, you can bet that there will be good chapters, all culminating in a life you never expected.

Providing you don’t hit the eject button.

Many times, when things don’t go as they should, we play the victim, feeling sorry for ourselves, like the universe has set its will against us. It’s a dangerous attitude, and left unchecked will incite us to disengage from all responsibility. Depression, anger, and addiction fall closely behind, adding fuel to the chaos, driving us closer to self-destruction.

But you’d be hard-pressed to find a hero, fictional or not, who’s perseverance through chaos didn’t shape who they ultimately became. What fascinates me is that perseverance doesn’t just affect the bearer, it ripples into everyone around them. Maybe that’s what St. Paul meant when he claimed that perseverance brings hope.

Rest assured that your chaos, lethal as it may seem, isn’t the end of your story. Many times it’s the beginning of one that could never happen otherwise.

Finding Peace in (a not-so-crazy) Faith

While religious people can often bring their own brand of chaos into this world, there are many others who’ve become people of peace; contagious life-changers whose faith has left an indelible mark.

My understanding of Christianity has led me to believe that peace is the hallmark of faith. On the other hand, judging others, exclusionary theology, and the telltale signs of graceless impatience all suggest a lack of faith, and lead the bearer to an anxious life, one completely inept at navigating chaos.

“Anxious Christian” is an oxymoron.

Regardless of what you may or may not believe, let’s say that there is a God – an almighty being who controls everything and wants what’s best for all of humanity. Everything He/She does is part of a bigger story, a wider narrative that would blow your mind if you had the ken to grasp it.

But when us modern Western individualist folk think about the universe, we think in terms of godless, pointless, randomness. And because nothing has a point, very few things have meaning, which makes our turbulent situations seem much more impossible.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say that I have to submit to a dentist who wants to yank out a tooth, but we’re 200 years in the past – anesthesia isn’t an option. If the tooth doesn’t come out, I’ll get super sick, maybe die. So I allow the chaos with a full belief that it will be over soon and I’ll be better for it.

But let’s say that I’m a two-year-old facing the same situation. I don’t have the ken, the cognitive faculties to understand, why I need to suffer. It seems pointless, like the dentist only wants to hurt me. If I could run, I would. And when the dentist is done, I’ll consider her, and anyone holding me down, regardless of how much I might have previously loved them, an enemy.

This kind of “blind” chaos is much more difficult to manage, much more impossible to sit in and persevere through. When we declare our chaos to be pointless, we run, scared, and will be hard-pressed to find peace.

But when we’re convinced to our core that there’s something bigger going on, that chaos is a construction project, not a demolishion derby, we put ourselves in a position of peace – we’re much more likely to see the good around us, persevere, and be better.

If your religion doesn’t do that for you. Get a new one.

You’re Not a Loser

My list of chaotic life-events is ever-growing. Every chapter of my existence has been attended by at least one relatively impossible situation. In a few of those I thought I’d lose my life. In two of them, someone did.

In all of my chaos I’ve felt an impending sense of some brand of annihilation.

I’m dealing with something today that’s rubbing its finger in a weakness that I’ve carried for most of my life. Because it’s driving so much fear about the future, I’ve spent the brunt of this morning ruminating over the different ways that I might try to control things, or force my will on someoneone else.

If I was a better/stronger/smarter person, wouldn’t I be able to work all of this out? I’m struggling to feel good about myself as I watch the wheels come off. It’s making me feel like a loser. What’s worse is that I’ve judged others who’ve gone through the exact same thing that I’m now experiencing.

If I was God, and I knew that the author of Peace Hacks wanted more peace, I’d go after the things that are getting in the way. I’d aim straight for his weaknesses.

And mister is this ever a place where I’m weak.

On a pure cognitive level, I know that I’m not a loser, but I feel that way because of a weakness that can only be engaged when someone/something stirs it all up. It has to be brought to the surface, and nothing does that like chaos.

For me, this adds to the belief that chaos isn’t random suffering. It has a point. It’s part of a bigger story that culminates in a better version of me, one that can help others to change as well.

Finding Peace in the Chaos that Goes Lethal

My troubles are light compared to, say, a single mom trying to pay the bills and get three kids through school, or an immigrant family approaching a border that will most likely be closed. I can’t speak to that kind of chaos, and I certainly don’t mean to make light of it.

On one hand, our world has Holocaust survivors who forgive their Nazi assailants, victims of racist oppression who call for peaceful resistance, and religious leaders who make a final plea for grace as they’re being nailed to a cross.

Some refuse to give in to their chaos, and their perseverance ripples far beyond them.

But chaos has his victims. Some choose to escape, cheat, lie, and in extreme circumstances, incite others to injustice, even war. And let’s not forget the chaos that falls on innocent people, the kind that nobody survives. The “I hope my girlfriend doesn’t break up with me” type of chaos is not the same as the kind that kills people.

As someone who suffers with PTSD, that level of chaos has left me with the impression that life hangs on a thread that might snap at any moment. The people I love can be taken at the whim of whatever deity holds the scissors.

I’m left tempted to distance myself from others, especially my wife and children. Intimate love is extremely difficult. Why get close to people if they can, in a split second, disappear?

In 1871, a wealthy lawyer and real estate developer named Horatio Spafford lost everything in the Great Chicago Fire. He had recently suffered the death of his son.

Seeking rest from the mayhem, he planned a European trip for his wife and four daughters, bought passage on the S.S. Ville du Havre, and promised to join them after completing some urgent business dealings.

Somewhere in the North Atlantic, the S.S. Deville collided with an English vessel, and sank in 12 minutes. Shortly after her rescue, his wife cabled Spafford with the simple message, “Saved alone.” He boarded a ship bound for England to join his wife.

As he approaced the site of the accident, he penned one of the most famous hymns of our time:

When peace like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well, with my soul.

Spafford would say that the very spirit of God attended him that day as he thought about his kids, drowning in the ocean below, and the horrors his wife endured.

Nobody should be able to find peace in a place like that.

Whatever you want to call it – God, karma, the power of the cosmos, etc., I’ve come to believe, as Spafford did, that whatever chaos I’m sure to experience in the future will be survivable, provided it doesn’t kill me, and that finding peace in the midst of it, while difficult, will never be impossible.

Photo Credit:Victor Rodriguez