Summoning Peace in the Chaos
When we can’t control the chaos, we can choose how we meet it.
Chaos is rarely something we choose. It doesn't ask permission before it shows up — it just does. The car won't start on the morning of the meeting that mattered. The phone rings with news you weren't ready for. The plans you spent months building shift overnight, and you're left standing in the middle of a day that no longer looks like the one you woke up expecting.
We don't get to choose whether chaos comes. But we do get to choose what we do with it.
That's the real test, isn't it? Not whether life will throw us something unexpected — it will, again and again, for as long as we're living it — but whether we'll let that moment write the rest of our story. Chaos doesn't wait for a convenient time to test us. It shows up in real time, in the middle of the mess, before we've had a chance to catch our breath or come up with a plan. And in that instant, before we've even decided how to respond, it's already asking us something: what are you going to do with this?
Will we let it control our day? Our mood? The way we speak to the people we love most — the ones who had nothing to do with the chaos in the first place? It's tempting to let it. When everything feels out of order, disorder has a way of spreading into every room of our lives: short tempers, distracted conversations, a tightness in the chest that outlasts the moment that caused it by hours. Chaos, left unchecked, doesn't stay contained to the thing that started it.
Or — we take control. Not of the chaos itself, because that was rarely ours to control in the first place, but of ourselves within it.
Real peace was never a reflection of circumstance. Every tradition of faith, every honest conversation about how people actually get through hard seasons, seems to land on the same truth: peace isn't the absence of noise. It's a presence in the middle of it. It doesn't require the storm to pass first. It asks to exist alongside the storm, which is a much harder and much more worthwhile thing.
That kind of peace has to be summoned. It rarely arrives on its own — not when the inbox is on fire, not when the plans fall apart three days before you needed them to hold, not when the conversation you were dreading finally happens. Peace, in those moments, is a decision. Sometimes it's a decision we have to make over and over again across a single afternoon, one breath at a time, one interaction at a time.
And maybe that's what makes chaos such an honest teacher. It doesn't just reveal what's happening around us — it reveals what's actually inside us. What we reach for when we're overwhelmed. Whether the calm we thought we had was real, or whether it was only ever the absence of anything hard.
So here's what I keep learning, and relearning, every time chaos shows up uninvited: I can't always choose what happens to me. But I can choose to pause before I react. I can choose to name what I'm actually feeling instead of letting it drive the car. I can choose one small, steady thing — a breath, a walk outside, a text to someone who understands — instead of letting the chaos multiply into every corner of my day.
And I don't have to do it alone. Some of the steadiest peace I've ever found didn't come from having everything figured out. It came from a friend who looked at me in the middle of my mess and said, "Me too." It came from a circle of women who had weathered their own chaos and didn't try to fix mine — they just sat in it with me until I could breathe again. There is a particular kind of relief in being known in the middle of the mess, rather than only after you've cleaned it up.
So the next time chaos is thrust upon you — and it will be, because that is simply what chaos does — try asking the real question. Not "why is this happening to me," but "what am I going to do with it." Will you let it run the day? Or will you summon the kind of peace that doesn't wait for calm to arrive first?
You get to choose. Every time. Even now.
Xx,
Brie
If this stirred something in you, we'd love to hear it. What helps you find peace in the middle of your own chaos? You're welcome to bring the answer — even the messy, unfinished version of it — into our next Sister Circle.
As Chief Growth Officer for Honest Heart Journeys, Brie’s mission is to help cultivate a community where women can experience deeper connection, greater clarity, a place of belonging and lasting personal growth.
She believes transformation isn't about becoming someone else—it's about remembering and reclaiming who you've been all along. Learn more about Brie >>
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