Last week, I took a friend for chemo treatment. I felt some apprehension leading up to it. Caregiving is not one of my top gifts, and I expected to feel some sadness in witnessing my friend’s suffering at the effects of the drugs and in remembering when I took my late mother-in-law for her treatment.

So I asked some others to pray for me, and I too asked God to give me peace in this small act of service. As I picked up my friend, I really did feel at peace, and that sense of calm remained through her appointment and the return drive home.

The moment I walked off her porch, however, tears welled in my eyes. I fought them as I made my way to the car and shut the door. My inclination was to wipe the tears away (along with the feelings behind them), drive home, and go on with my day. But they were pretty insistent, so I gave in to the waterworks and had a good cry for a few minutes.

When I stopped, I chided myself for the lapse in my calm demeanor. My tears, runny nose, and red face served as accusers—God had answered our prayers and had given me peace, but had I allowed it to slip away. Once again, I thought, I’d taken my eyes off God and focused on the bad and the sad. Shame on me.

As I’ve thought more about my reaction that day, though, I’ve wondered more broadly about my understanding of what it means to be “at peace.” Is it really just feeling calm in a storm? Contentment in the midst of sad things? Feeling A-OK when something is most definitely not OK? Saying “it’s all good” when facing tough situations? I think that’s how I’ve always viewed peace: as an absence of—or perhaps, on some level, an ability to deny—any emotion that’s not a warm, fuzzy feeling.

But God gave us the full spectrum of emotions, so it seems strange that in granting us a “peace that surpasses all understanding,” God would disconnect us from some of those emotions as though they were invalid or unnatural. Perhaps, instead, his peace comes amid those feelings—not replacing or cancelling them out. And perhaps I’m focusing on the wrong word all together. Maybe instead of asking God for peace in a stressful circumstance, I should ask God to help me be aware of his presence in it, to help me authentically feel all the resulting emotions, and yet be assured that, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

We’ve just celebrated Easter… but I’m left thinking about Maundy Thursday and the word God spoke to me during our church’s service that evening.

I really didn’t want to go to the service, with its focus on Christ’s final days, his death, and burial. Anything related to death makes me uneasy lately, and I often land in a place of sad contemplation about my own mortality, which I’d prefer to avoid, thank you.

I was ready to skip the service, but thanks to a rain-out of my son’s sporting event, I had no excuse. Out of duty I went, fully expecting to become emotional at some point and leave feeling burdened and depressed. When I arrived to find the only light was from candles that we’d extinguish one by one throughout a tenebrae service, my sense of dread intensified.

Instead, what I experienced was a release. During a time of reflection, I felt God illuminating within me an understanding that I’ve been focused for too long on death—my own, that is—and it was time to lay that down. I felt suddenly quite at peace, and somehow lighter.

When I got the diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, I mentally and emotionally packed up what I thought I knew of my eventual demise into a tidy pack, and I’ve carried it along with me every day since, sometimes adding to its contents along the way. Some days that pack has been just a subtle weight pressing on my mind and emotions, some days it has been heavier than I can bear, and some days I’ve almost forgotten it was there. But it has been an ever-present accessory.

In our gathering, it was as though God was asking, “Will you let me carry that for you?” In that moment, I let him take it.

And by the end of the service, I was convicted that Jesus did not go to the cross and rise to new life so that I may waste time pondering my own end. He died and rose again and filled me with his spirit so that I may have abundant life—now and until the moment I draw my last earthly breath and even into eternity. And as for the last breath part, I don’t get to know when that will be or what it will look like, and any energy I spend contemplating that is energy I’m not spending living fully.

I’m sure I’ll wrestle the metaphorical pack away from God and insist on carrying it myself again. I’m stubborn that way. But maybe the realization of what I’m doing will come more swiftly each time I snatch it back and feel its weight. And maybe one day, through prayer and practice, I’ll fully surrender it.