A Time for Peace and Miracles

As I said in last week's post, if you want to be in joy, you have to choose joy. Of course, if you're familiar with me at all, you know I believe your choices are largely responsible for creating your moods and determining the results you get from your endeavors. So you won't be surprised to hear me say this week: If you want peace, you have to choose peace.

If you want to experience miracles, you have to believe in miracles, and you have to make room for miracles in your life. These things are not necessarily easy to do, but I'm willing to bet they're easier than you think they are. And there is no better time of the year to put them into practice than during the winter religious and secular holidays celebrating hope and new beginnings.

Finding Peace in Chaos

Let's begin by considering peace. I've had conversations with several people over the last couple of weeks who are dreading the family scenarios they're going to be participating in during this week. It can be difficult to find peace in the midst of chaos, and it's never harder than when that chaos is being created by people you love and feel obligated to.

I know many of you have family members you love because they are family. You share a long history with these people. Some of them you have literally known your entire life. But you may not like some of them very much.

Family holiday gatherings tend to bring out both the best and worst in people, and keeping that in mind can be the first step in finding peace during the time you spend with them. I hope your family is one of the best ones, where everyone genuinely cares about one another and hidden agendas are completely absent.

But if yours isn't one of those, you're going to need to plan ahead to use your coping skills. If your family is one of those difficult families, well, you already know what to expect...

Uncle Harry is going to drink too much eggnog. Aunt Betty is going to gossip about all the family members who are not present. Your mother is going to serve up a large side dish of guilt with the ham. And your father? Yeah, he's going to bring up politics. You know your brother is going to insult one of your kids, and someone's going to slam a door before the whole thing's over with. Or maybe your family is one of those with a perfect veneer, pasted over all the tensions that simmer underneath.

If you happen to be hosting or attending any of these kinds of gatherings, you have my deepest sympathies. But you also have choices to make. And the very first one of these is to choose your mindset.

You can also plan your responses to the events ahead of time. Both of these can increase your sense of peace before, during, and after the celebrations. Let's say you're dealing with Uncle Harry and his little drinking problem.

If you're hosting and you can control whether alcohol is served, you can decide whether he's more enjoyable to be around with or without alcohol. But if the party's at his place, you have other decisions to make. Maybe you keep a distance between the two of you, or you discount anything he says while under the influence, or you leave the car running in the driveway so you can make an early exit.

When Aunt Betty starts in with the gossip, you can change the subject or distract her with pie or tell a wild story of your own. If your brother gets loud or your dad gets obnoxious, you can chant under your breath, "I love these people. I love these people. I love these people. And it's only another 30 minutes until they go home."

Choosing Your Peace

Keeping your sense of peace does not necessarily mean keeping the general peace. Or going along to get along. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I've chosen to limit my contact with certain family members because I'm deeply disturbed by their racist comments and their criticisms of ideals I hold dear.

I've made my objections known to them over the years, especially when they've been under my roof. But they are unwilling to change their behavior to keep the peace, so why in the world would I feel compelled to change mine? I create my own peace by deciding not to spend time with them.

And more than that, I do not feel guilty about avoiding them. I am simply choosing my response to their conscious actions. Occasionally, someone will criticize me because I choose not to spend the holidays with close blood kin. But I remind myself the critics are operating from a set of cultural norms. They aren't considering my personal circumstances.

Only you know what brings you peace. Only you can choose it. Only you reap the consequences of those decisions. If you do things because you think other people think you should, well, then you're simply choosing to put others in charge of your results.

Is that really something you want to do? And whatever you decide, you don't have to make a big announcement or production out of it. If you decide you aren't going to be part of the family festivities, just make other plans.

You are not required to explain or to provide excuses. If in the middle of the festivities, you need to disappear into the bathroom so you can take a few deep breaths or meditate for a few moments, you don't owe anyone an explanation. If you truly want to create a sense of peace, take responsibility for your own behavior, and be sure you are not contributing to creating any drama.

If you keep smiling and expressing best wishes for everyone you are with and acting with kindness, you can feel content with your choices, regardless of how others decide to respond to what you say and do. This contentment is one of my definitions of peace.

Believing in Miracles

So what about miracles? Do you believe in miracles? Do you think they happen today? What is a miracle anyway?

When I looked it up on dictionary.com, this is what I found. The first definition of a miracle is, "an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause."

I think we cut ourselves off from miracles by what we know to be impossible. When we expand our definitions of what could possibly happen, we open ourselves to allowing those miraculous things to happen.

Some of the best things that have ever happened to me have happened when I gave up my illusions about what was impossible and accepted the idea that anything could happen. In spite of my basically pessimistic nature, I began to believe that even good things could happen if I opened myself to the possibility. I even allowed myself to believe I was not basically pessimistic by nature, but I might have been a pessimist because I have been trained in how to think by pessimistic people.

Let me give you an example of the kind of miracle I'm talking about. When my first daughter was just a year old, I went through a divorce from her father. I had not worked in a few years at that time, and I was having a hard time finding a job to support the two of us.

My first choice would have been to go back to broadcast news, the field I had previously worked in and knew very well. But there were no positions available in the area where I lived. I allowed myself to look for other jobs, but only within narrow parameters.

The job had to be within a certain geographic area and within certain working hours to allow me to care for her. I told myself I would take any work that fit within those restrictions, but nothing came along. The divorce was nearly final, and I was feeling desperate.

It was truly awful, a feeling I hope to never have again. A friend suggested I take a different approach. He said, "Why don't you choose five or six cities you think you would like to live in and choose five or six radio stations or television stations in each one of those cities and just send them your resume and audition recordings? Don't worry about whether they have an opening now or not because many jobs are filled before they're even advertised."

Well, I had nothing to lose, so I did what he said. On a Monday, I sent 30 packets to broadcast companies. On Friday of that week, I received the only phone call I would receive as a result of those 30 packets. It was a call from the operations manager of a radio station in Cincinnati, Ohio.

He didn't tell me whether he had an opening on his staff. Instead, he asked me to describe my dream job. I told him my preference would be to work as part of a morning team with a couple of others, a disc jockey or two, or maybe another news person. He invited me to come to Cincinnati the following Monday, two days later, for an interview.

And on Tuesday, he offered me the best job I ever had. I would have thought it was impossible because I had been out of the field already for a few years, and also because I made the leap from a small radio market to a major market without any stop in between. It felt like a miracle to me, but there was nothing supernatural about it.

Well, at least nothing obviously so. And I didn't know the funny part of the story until months later. My boss and morning team partner was Fred, the news director. Fred eventually told me that he and Dan, another newsman, had only listened to the recording I sent them because they thought it would be good for a laugh. After all, he said, your name was LouAnn and you were from Henderson, Kentucky. We were all surprised when you turned out to be good.

Listen, you don't know what's impossible. You only know what you believe to be impossible. What miracle do you dream of this holiday season? Can you let yourself believe it is not impossible?

I'm not saying you're guaranteed to get what you hope for or what you ask for. I am saying that the hope itself is a great gift to create for yourself. You may not receive the exact miracle you want, the specific job, the relationship with a certain person, or the exact car or house or other possession. But when you open your mind to the possibilities of miracles, you will start to look for them. And if you know anything at all about A Decided Difference, you will find what you look for.

I wish peace and miracles for all of you this holiday season.