“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
JOURNAL
Years ago, I went through a really dark season. One of the hardest parts was feeling completely alone in what I was experiencing. I prayed for God to change my circumstances, remove the pain, and make things right. God did show up, but often in ways I never expected and sometimes completely contrary to what I was asking for.
The clip from The Legend of Bagger Vance has always spoken to me because Junuh is lost. Bagger tells him that inside every one of us there is "one true, authentic swing." Junuh hasn't really lost it. It is still there, buried beneath everything that has happened to him. Bagger's role isn't to give him something he never possessed. It is to help him find his way back to something that was there all along.
I think God has done something similar in my life. In those dark moments, I thought I needed Him simply to change my circumstances. What I really needed was for Him to lead me back to who I was and, more importantly, whose I was. I belonged to Him. I had always belonged to Him. I had simply lost sight of it beneath the fear, shame, disappointment, and uncertainty.
And maybe that is why our suffering can eventually connect us so deeply to other people. Everyone struggles. Everyone doubts. Everyone gets scared. Everyone waits, worries, cries, and hurts. We tend to believe our pain separates us from others, but perhaps our pain is actually one of the things that reveals how deeply we belong to one another.
My loneliness can become a desire to comfort. My hurt can become a desire to heal. My anger can become a desire to reconcile. My fear can make me more compassionate toward someone who is afraid. God doesn't have to waste any of it. The very things that once made me feel isolated can become the things He uses to help someone else find their way back.
Maybe that is what Mother Teresa meant when she said we lose peace when we forget that we belong to each other. We are all God's children. We are all imperfect. We are all carrying things others cannot see. We are all, in one way or another, trying to find our way home.
Jesus said people would recognize His disciples by the way they love one another. Sometimes that love is incredibly simple: a smile, a word, a hug, a note, encouragement, or simply standing beside someone who has temporarily forgotten who they are. Maybe God places us in each other's lives to do what Bagger did for Junuh: not to fix one another, but to patiently remind each other of what is still there and help each other find our way back.
Perhaps that is where real joy comes from. Not from finally reaching a life without struggle, but from allowing God to transform our struggles into love for someone else. Maybe peace isn't the absence of pain. Maybe peace is remembering who we are, whose we are, and that none of us were ever meant to find our way home alone.
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