Finding Peace as We Long for a Simpler Time

I often find myself longing for a simpler time. Maybe you do too. You know, kids playing outside until dark, running around and laughing because the only screen was in the family room and they’d rather play with friends. Adults acting respectful, putting their best foot forward in work, manners, and appearance. Communities gathering together to organize meaningful events, overseeing each other’s kids, and otherwise supporting the families in their neck of the woods.

As I’ve been writing my upcoming historical fiction release, A MESS OF DREAMS, my mind has been firmly rooted in the 1940s. A simpler time in so many ways. No televisions to encourage wasted time. No social media to brew division and encourage hateful words as people hide behind their screens. No internet ready to fuel addictions and destroy families.

In the 40s, people banded together more than perhaps any other time in modern American history. People had each other’s backs, worked together, volunteered together, and raised kids side by side.

By now, you may be wondering if I’ve forgotten something as I paint this peaceful, idyllic picture. A little something called World War Two, perhaps?

You’re right. A large portion of the 40s involved much fear, worry, and hard work above and beyond times past. Families in America may have been an ocean away from the action, but there was plenty to worry about on the home front. In A MESS OF DREAMS, my main character Lorene has similar worries. Could Japan attack the U.S. from the West? Would Germany drop bombs on American soil?

Families lived with these worries while simultaneously upending their “normal” lives to support the war effort. Men flooded overseas to fight while women flooded factories to fill the vacant jobs. Teens had less oversight and structure than in decades past because, often, both parents were busy during the days. The times were anything but simple.

Community victory gardens, volunteer public safety classes, and milkweed drives to provide buoyant materials for our troops’ life jackets are a few of the ways you see people band together in the small community of Potomac (my real life hometown and the setting for my upcoming Middlefork Series) in A MESS OF DREAMS. 

And still, as I listen to my Glenn Miller album and picture it all unfolding in black and white, the past still seems a bit simpler—although I’m sure it wasn’t, in reality.

Maybe it’s comparable to how parents sometimes think the grass is greener on the other side of parenting.

Parents of toddlers think, “Life will be so much simpler when my kids are older and can be more independent.” While parents of teens think, “Life was so much simpler when the kids were toddlers.”

The truth is that toddlers are physically taxing with nonstop safety hazards, while teens are emotionally taxing with all the big concepts and changes they’re sorting through as they grow into young adults. Both stages are full of good and difficult things alike, and both stages result in tired parents!

The 1940s were simpler in some ways, even as physical chaos disrupted the world. Back then, people in America largely held the same values, the same standards, and the same understanding of world events. These shared views and beliefs allowed people to live harmoniously and work together toward a mutual cause. Doesn’t that sound inspiring? I’m sure it was in many ways! But much like parenting toddlers, it was also a strained, exhausting time.

These days, we have to guard ourselves and question who to trust. Can I say what I really believe around this or that person? Will they cancel me? Shame me online and get the entire world, including an army of bots, to belittle me just because I disagree? The constant emotional whiplash required to engage with the world today is exhausting and discouraging, to say the least.

With so much innovation over the past decades, our lives have become far less physically demanding, while the emotional and psychological demands have ramped up to outrageous levels. Sort of like parenting teenagers. ;)

(For the record, I am loving parenting my teenagers! Just trying to draw dramatic comparisons, haha!)

When I start to long for a simpler time, I have to stop and remind myself that all those “simpler times” I’m so fond of visiting in my imagination may not actually have been quite as simple as I’d like to believe.

God has put us where we are in this world, in this moment, for his greater purposes. Maybe we don’t understand why. Maybe we think he should have put us into a different decade or even century, where we feel we would have more easily fallen into step with the world around us. But that’s not our choice to make. This is where we have to trust his plan over ours. We have to surrender our longing for something else and allow ourselves to be used by Him in what is.

Surrendering to God’s master plan is the only way to find peace. Digging in our heels and resisting will only wear us out. I’d like to say I know this from observing my toddlers in years past, because that sounds more mature than saying I know from experience as an adult, but the latter is the truth.

So I’ll count my blessings and be thankful God put me where he did in this moment in time, even when the past and its seemingly-simpler times beckon.

Maybe I miss out on quaint events like the town-wide cakewalk at the beginning of my novel, but at least I don’t have to manage a giant victory garden, make do with rationing coupons, or worry about lots of men I know and care about fighting in one of the most brutal wars the world has ever seen.

Whether now or then was actually a simpler time, God alone gives us the grace and strength to live the days we’ve been given. I’ll likely still read about the forties with some level of imagined nostalgia, but I don’t have to wish myself out of my current situation to do so.

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