You Can’t Protect Yourself Into Peace

Some prisons don’t have locks. They’re built from things that once made us feel safer.

I want to tell you a story about one of them.

There was once a princess who lived in a great fortress at the center of her father’s kingdom. Its archways stood open to the roads and fields beyond, and people came and went freely beneath them.

In the courtyard stood the King’s table.

When the princess was young, she sat beside her father every evening. The Shepherd was often there too, returning from the hills with his sheep. The princess followed him through the fields and wandered through the orchards, running home when she heard her father call, “Daughter, come to the table.”

There were enemies in the kingdom. The princess sometimes saw a wolf beyond the archway or a dangerous stranger on the road. But she gave them little thought. She knew whose kingdom this was, and she knew the Shepherd.

Then one evening, as she returned alone from the orchard, a wolf came out of the trees, and she ran. She could hear it gaining on her as she raced toward the fortress. When she reached the archway, the Shepherd was there. The princess ran to him and stood trembling at his side, watching the wolf beyond the archway. When darkness fell, she walked back through the courtyard with the Shepherd and joined the evening feast.

But the next morning, something had changed. The princess looked toward the archway. No wolf. A few minutes later, she looked again. Still no wolf. She moved a little farther from the archway. When her friends went to the orchard, she stayed behind.

She felt safer.

As the years passed, other enemies came. A man she trusted stole something precious from her. Someone she loved disappeared for a night. A woman who called herself a friend wounded her with words she could not forget. And the princess became very good at protecting herself. She kept precious things farther inside the fortress. She watched the roads from the tower. She checked who was in the courtyard before entering.

Each time the princess moved away from what frightened her, she felt better, but the feeling never lasted. Soon she was watching again, checking again, listening again. So she moved a little farther inside, and once again she felt relief, at least for a while. She did not know it then, but relief and peace are not the same thing.

The King still held his feasts. One evening, as music filled the courtyard, a servant found the princess watching the road from the tower. “Your father is asking for you,” he said. “I’ll be there in a moment,” she replied. Another evening she was checking the storeroom when she heard her father call, “Daughter, come to the table.” Again she answered, “In a moment.” There were many such moments, and little by little, fear led her farther inside.

No wolves came there. No thieves came there. No cruel women came there. Eventually, neither did the music. The princess had finally found a place where almost nothing she feared could reach her, and yet she was still afraid. She listened for a wolf she could no longer hear, worried about treasures no thief could see, and wondered about travelers on roads hidden behind walls of stone. Her protections had removed the things she feared from sight without removing the fear. The prison could give her relief, but it could not give her peace.

Then, in the silence, the princess remembered herself as a little girl sitting at her father’s table. She remembered the enemies that had been there even then, and she remembered a wolf standing beneath the archway. Most of all, she remembered what she had done when she saw it. She had looked at the Shepherd.

The little girl she had been had not known peace because there were no wolves. There had been wolves then too. She had known peace because she knew where to look.

Then, from somewhere beyond the walls, came a familiar voice. “Daughter.” She stopped and listened. “Do not be afraid.” She knew those words. The King had said them. Then came the words she had heard since childhood: “Come to the table.”

The old warnings answered immediately. Check first. Wait. Watch. Something might happen. But suddenly the princess saw what she had not seen before. Every voice she had obeyed had led her farther from the King. His voice had been calling her toward him all along.

So she stood. The warnings followed her, but she did not follow them. She followed the voice of the King. As she walked, she began to hear music, and then she smelled bread. At last she reached the great hall and saw the courtyard beyond it. The feast was still there, and so was an enemy.

The princess stopped. Then she saw the Shepherd standing between the enemy and the table. Beyond him sat her father, and beside him was the chair that had belonged to her since she was small. “Daughter,” the King called, “come to the table.”

She looked back toward the darkness of the fortress. No enemy had put her there. The wolf had not chased her down those corridors. The thief had not hidden her there. The cruel woman had not shut her away. She had walked there herself.

The wolf had chased her for minutes. She had been running from him for years. The enemies had come and gone, but her protections had remained. The fortress had been built to protect her life. Fear had taught her to hide inside it.

The feast had never moved. She had.

The princess turned toward the Shepherd and came to the table.

The Difference Between Relief and Peace

An ancient song pictures God setting a table for us in the presence of our enemies. That may be one of the strangest pictures of peace ever written. The table isn’t set after the danger has passed. It’s set in its presence.

The song is Psalm 23, written thousands of years ago, and its picture of peace turns ours upside down. We tend to think peace is something we will finally experience when enough of the threatening things are gone. When the diagnosis changes, the relationship is fixed, the money is finally there, the person we love loves us back, or we finally know what happens next. We keep moving peace to the other side of whatever scares us.

That was the princess’s mistake. She thought if she could put enough distance between herself and everything that frightened her, eventually she would find peace. And every retreat seemed to prove her right because it brought her some relief. But that relief kept wearing off, so she had to retreat again. Her protections removed the things she feared from sight without removing the fear.

The prison could give her relief. It just couldn’t give her peace.

We build our own versions of that fortress. We check, plan, avoid, prepare, rehearse, control, and wait. None of those things is necessarily wrong. In fact, they can be wise. The trouble starts when we ask them to give us something they can’t. And then we spend years getting better and better at making ourselves feel safe while becoming less and less free.

That’s because you can manufacture relief, but you can’t manufacture peace. And that changes everything. If peace depends on getting your life under control, then peace will always be one solved problem away. We all know there’ll always be another person to worry about, another uncertainty to eliminate, or another possibility to prepare for. Life will keep giving us reasons to say, “In a minute. I’ll live when I’ve taken care of this. Just give me a sec.”

But God doesn’t set the table in a world emptied of enemies. He sets it in the presence of our enemies. And that means that peace can’t be the absence of everything that frightens us. It has to come from somewhere bigger than the circumstances we’re trying to control.

The princess had known that once. Her younger world hadn’t been safer. The wolves had been there then, too. What changed wasn’t the presence of danger, but where she looked for peace. As a child, she looked to the Shepherd. As she grew afraid, she looked to the walls.

Where are you looking for peace? Because whatever you’re waiting to get under control before you can really live has the power to keep you waiting. There’ll always be one more thing to fix, check, settle, or know.

But the table is waiting. Freedom starts when you notice where fear has been leading you. Look at what you’ve stopped doing, where your world has grown smaller, what you keep checking, controlling, or avoiding just to buy yourself a few more minutes of relief. Those are the walls of the prison. And once you can see where fear has been leading you, you can start walking in the other direction.

Peace isn’t waiting at the end of a perfectly controlled life. God offers it in the middle of the life you have, before every problem is solved, before every uncertainty is settled, before every enemy is gone.

The enemies are present, but so is God. And at his table there is a chair with your name on it. Come to the table.

A Littel More About The Fortress

This story grew out of an idea at the heart of The Overprotective Brain. In the book, Dr. Sam Tyriver and I use the image of a fortress to explain something fascinating about the brain: the very systems designed to protect us can become overprotective, eventually keeping us from the life they were trying to protect.

The book explores the neuroscience behind that process, especially in chronic pain and anxiety, and how we can begin teaching an overprotective brain that it doesn’t have to sound every alarm.

If the princess’s fortress felt a little familiar, you might find yours in these pages.

You can also find more articles, stories, and diagnostics at The Overprotective Brain Journal.