Be honest – how much peace do you really have in your life?

To be completely frank, I find moments of peace harder and harder to find as my life gets busier and busier. My guess is that others face a similar reality in your life, with work and other commitments increasingly present amidst what used to be down time, thanks to ever-increasing connectivity. Many of us are to the point where we’re so busy that we’re too busy to know what we’re missing out on. From smart phones to iPads, our gadgets keep us constantly aware of everything from emails to meeting reminders.

Put simply, we are overconnected.

Now, it should be said that connectively isn’t all bad – it has its perks, including allowing many of us to work wherever and whenever we want, but at the same time it’s hard to “log off” as we used to be able to do when we headed home for the day. As a result, our connectivity is causing us to become less and less connected to peace in our daily lives. This is a tough realization, as it’s really the opposite of what many of us work so hard to ultimately achieve.

For me, although I find fewer moments of peace at my current pace, they are more clear and powerful when I do find them.

The other night, I was cooking dinner and I looked over at the kitchen table and my wife had our son in her lap drawing a Christmas tree, with our other son next to her doing the same thing. To add to the moment, Bing Crosby’s “I’ll be Home for Christmas” was playing in the background via Magic 95.5. I stood there and took a snapshot in my mind of that moment – a point in time where all the world was right – God smiled on me and I smiled back.

As I reflected on that moment, I wondered how many times I haven’t smiled back at God, not because I wasn’t there, but because wasn’t fully there. I wasn’t at peace with the moment.

The My One Word process has been a time for me to reflect on life – how did I do this year? Where can I improve? What are my goals for 2013? I keep coming back to one word – peace – as a guide for 2013 and I’m excited to see what happens.