Canadian Author, Miriam Toews, has won many literary awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction, the Atwood Gibson Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award. Some of her novels have been made into feature films. But it is not fiction that has put her on my list of books to read. It is the intriguing title of her memoir, “A Truce that is Not Peace.”

I have been praying for peace for most, if not all, of my life. Some of my teenage prayers for peace focused on the War in Vietnam. The news reports of the deaths of soldiers and civilians, combined with my inability to understand the reasons for the war and the failure of our country to extract itself from what seemed like ever-increasing tragedy and suffering, seemed to cry out for divine intervention. My age and the draft made my prayers personal. Looking back, I cannot tell if my prayers for peace were for others or for myself.

Praying for peace is a core spiritual discipline of Christianity and many other religious traditions. People pray for inner calm, for reconciliation with family and friends, for an absence of conflict in the community and around the world. We refer to Jesus as the Prince of Peace, a name that appears in Isaiah’s prophecy. In our worship, we pass the peace, greeting one another with the peace of Christ. As a pastor, I often used a slightly modified quote from the letter to the Philippians, “May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” as a benediction at the end of worship.

There are some prayers that I know will continue to be a part of my life for the rest of my life. Praying for peace is one of them. My prayers for peace have included the names of places of conflict: Vietnam, Bosnia, Laos, South Africa, Sudan, the Philippines, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Myanmar, and many other places. I often find myself praying for peace in areas where conflict seems inevitable. The continuing violence and devastation in Gaza make envisioning peace an almost impossible task. The interplay of superpowers makes imagining peace in Ukraine a challenge. Nonetheless, I continue to pray for peace.

Prayers that do not have obvious answers are a part of many lives, and Toews reports on several prayers in her memoir. The Paris Review article on her book contains her version of the story of her life's beginning. “My mother had prayed for six years to become pregnant. Had she considered avenues other than prayer? That was my sister’s joke.” The memoir goes on to report that her mother said she had been conceived on the night of her grandfather's funeral. Her mother said, “That night? That night, your father was either going to kill himself or create a new life.” Toews reports that she was “conceived from death and despair and six years of begging God.”

The title of the book, “A Truce that is Not Peace,” refers to the profound tragedies her family has endured. Although he did not end his life at the beginning of hers, her father struggled with mental illness and depression for many years; he died by suicide in 1998. Toews has previously explored this tragedy in her book “Swing Low,” which is told from her father’s perspective. As is the case in many families, the grief did not stop with a single death. Twelve years later, in the midst of severe depression, Toews’ sister also died by suicide. In her memoir, she struggles with how to make peace with the tragic results of decisions that her loved ones made.

Suicide is never a purely personal tragedy. It always affects a wide circle of others. And the others are left to make sense of something that will never make sense. In my work with survivors of suicide, I often told those who had recently lost a loved one that the death of their loved one is not something that one can get over. “You won’t get over this. You can, however, get through this. But you won’t get through it alone.”

Toews has learned to understand the pain her father and her sister experienced. She has learned to respect the choices they made. Feeling that respect has been a struggle for her as she has moved through the stages of her life. She has learned that respect is not the same as compassion. She is not capable of feeling the pain of her loved ones in the same way that they experienced it. And she admits she cannot fully understand the choices of her loved ones. Even without understanding, however, she has learned respect and discovered an uneasy truce with the realities of her life. That truce is not peace.

Throughout my life, in addition to praying for peace in places around the world, I have often prayed for peace for individuals I have come to know. Some of them I have met through my work in the church. Some of them I have met as a suicide first responder. Some of them, like Miriam Toews, I have not met face-to-face, but have known through their writing. Others have come to me in news stories. I cannot count the number of times I have prayed that others might find peace.

Toews’s book suggests another way for me to understand my prayers. As I continue to pray for peace, perhaps I can learn to look for signs of truce even when peace has not yet come. It may even be the case that the truce precedes peace. How wonderful it would be if Toews’ truce, which is not peace, might become one step on the journey towards the peace that passes all understanding.

I know that praying for peace will always be a part of my life. The places may change. The names may change. The faces may change. The prayer will continue. May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.