Where can I turn for peace?

Hello friends and family!

 

This week has been one of extreme ups and extreme downs, hasn't it?  I just keep re-reading the bit in the email about Kline's "SALUTE!" and can't help myself from tearing up at that.  What a great tribute to a great man.

 

As far as the week itself goes, the work has been slow.  I think God made it that way so that I have the opportunity to inflect and give myself to serious prayer and pondering.  Upon hearing about Kyle's passing, I asked myself many of the same questions found in Hymn 129-"Where can I turn for peace? Where is my solace when other sources cease to make me whole? When, with a wounded heart, anger, or malice, I draw myself apart, searching my soul?  Where, when my aching grows? Where, when I languish? Where, in my need to know, where can I run? Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish? Who, who can understand?" and then the powerful answers contained in the same song:  "He, only One. He answers privately, reaches my reaching in my Gethsemane-Savior and Friend. Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching. Constant he is, and kind love without end."  Then, ironically, the words to a Garth Brooks song got stuck in my head: "There’s a ship out on the ocean, at the mercy of the sea. It’s been tossed about, lost and broken; wandering aimlessly. And God, somehow you know that ship is me. ‘Cause there’s a lighthouse in a harbor shining faithfully; pouring its light out across the water for this sinking soul to see."  Now, I wasn't exactly sinking or anything, but the answers I'd just gotten were reaffirmed so powerfully in that moment; God is always there and is the source to which we can turn in this or any hour of darkness.  Then, as we were listening to a CD by Timothy Goodman (one of the members in a nearby ward), I was looking through the lyric book to read the words to a song that I particularly liked, called "Inside of Me."  (I HIGHLY recommend his CD, by the way.)  What I found first was a quote by James E. Faust: "An important part of the spiritual being within all of us is the quiet and sacred part from which we may feel a sanctification in our lives. It is that part of us wherein no other soul may intrude. It is that part that permits us to come close to the divine, both in and out of this world. This portion of our beings is reserved only for ourselves and our Creator."  With this quote, the "Therefore What?" principle hit me hard: to find the peace and solace that I knew was available, I had to get on my knees and go to that place within me to talk with, walk with, and mourn with my Savior.  With the opportunities I've had to do this, I cannot express the true joy and peace I have felt.  Christ has always been real to me; my Older Brother and Friend at all times, but He is now such a bigger part of my life.  I would rather have had different circumstances in coming to Him, but the bottom line is simple: I am here.  The hope is that in being here, I can begin to enlargen this place's place inside of myself (does that even make any sense...?) so that I can remain close to Him at all times.  Simply put, this place is home.  This place is that harbor that I can always go to.  The light is ALWAYS shining; but it is our responsibility to get there ourselves.  It is in this place that we can feel of God's love and fully utilize the Atoning Sacrifice of His Son.  I'm sure that many of you have retreated to that place this week, but if you haven't, I invite you to do so.  That place inside each of us is the best place to be and the closest I've ever been to Home.

 

I love you all and hope that all is going well; have a great week!

 

-Elda Alexander Boone