Authorpreneur Dashboard – Stephanie Haynes
Cultivating Peace: Receiving God's Peace within Your Chaos
Religion & Spirituality
A life lived in chaos is no kind of life. No matter how crazy your life seems today, God has a way for you to receive His peace in the midst of your chaos. Cultivating Peace will walk you through each messy place in your life one courageous step of faith at a time. Through a series of courageous choices, Stephanie has learned how to live an authentic, messy life centered on the love of Jesus. This book is a result of that journey. From learning the truth about who you really are, to practical advice for dealing with the chaos of your home, Cultivating Peace encourages that woman struggling with her own personal chaos and shows her God has a way out and into His lasting peace.
Book Bubbles from Cultivating Peace: Receiving God's Peace within Your Chaos
Marital Conflict vs Wedded Bliss
When we enter into marriage with expectations of how things "should" be rather than trying to build something new with our spouse we create opportunities for marital conflict rather than wedded bliss. We all have ideas about how we want our marriages to look, but if we aren't aware of those ideals enough to talk them through with our spouses, and create opportunities for compromise, we are setting up ourselves and our spouses to feel like a failure in our marriages. Instead, consider letting go of whatever expectations you are holding on to and invite God to share His vision for your marriage with you and your spouse. His ways will not be your ways, but they will create a marriage better than anything you can create on your own.
Identity Crisis
Have you ever felt trapped by your identity... or lack thereof? I have and it's frightening. I had always dreamed of being a teacher and when that was removed from my life I had no idea who I was. I had spent my whole life growing into becoming a teacher, and ten years as one, that once I wasn't one I no longer knew who I was. This is the problem with having our identities rooted in anything other than Jesus. Jobs, marriages, parenthood, all the things we allow to make up our identities are not guaranteed. Jobs ends or marriages break apart and children (rightfully) leave. When that happens who we are shouldn't fall apart. Adopting the identity that God intended us to have the only way to avoid the chaos that comes in the face of a worldly identity crisis.
Comparison Kills
Too often women tear each other down instead of build them up. Can we all please just stop? Imagine how much better we could be, how much better our culture could be, if instead of tearing down we built each other up! Does it really matter who stays home and who works, who's married and who's single, who's a mom and who isn't? Aren't we ALL trying to make a difference in the world; hoping to somehow make it a better place? Live your own unique best life and encourage others to do the same in love for their unique purpose in this world, not in trying to make them become more like you.
Living a Lie
The most destructive lies are those we believe about ourselves. I spent years believing the lie that I wasn't enough. It caused me to strive to the point of total exhaustion and major breakdown. No one should have to experience that. I have learned there is a way to live in freedom from those kinds of lies. It's not easy at first, especially since choosing to believe the Truth seems like a scarier alternate to living with the lies. But, once you have a taste, you will never want to go back to living with those lies again.
Unravelling the Chaos
I always believed if I did what was right everything would work out. What I discovered during one of the most stressful times of my life, however, is that "right" is a messy concept that, if left to our own understanding, will often lead us into chaos rather than the peace we are searching for. It was when I allowed God to determine what was right for me, in the season I was in, and chose to follow His lead over my own ideas, that the peace I had been longing for finally came.
