The past couple months have been a whirlwind, it seems like. During a violent storm, time stands still amidst the chaos it brings. If you are anything like my family and I we love watching storms( although my sisters, I think, are still a bit skittish when a storm rolls in…love you! ). One of my favorite vacation memories from a trip to Oregon we took as a family happened at Crater Lake. It makes my list of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Standing on the rim of a dead volcano holding crystal clear blue water that looked like a sheet of glass. As we marveled at the glory of creation before us, clouds began to form and we heard thunder roll in. Flashes of lightning started to break and grew in intensity and frequency the more we watched. I can’t really describe to you how soothing it is for me to experience a storm. It’s one of my favorite things to wake up to a rain and thunder outside my window. But it wasn’t always this way.
When I was a kid storms terrified me. The darkness that they brought, the noise like a freight train rolling through our neighborhood, and depending on the severity of the storm, the destruction left in the aftermath. To see the news alerts pop up on TV was a very real nightmare. How do you defend yourself against a force of nature? Something that comes and goes of its own will like it has a mind of its very own. Picking when and where it would strike on a whim. Hiding in the basement and distracting myself seemed the best choice. Remembering all this reminds me of another kind of storm. Life (que epic plot twist music).
My life for the past year now has felt much like the storms of my childhood. Big inescapable-noisy-damage-dealing clouds of rage and hate that consumes and destroys everything in its path (sounds like something out of a comic book or fantasy novel). Running and hiding in the basement to watch movies and play video games served one purpose. To help me create a world in my mind that was better than the one I was currently in. It gave me a sense of control that I didn’t actually have in that moment. I couldn’t control the weather (as cool and handy as that would be…) and I certainly didn’t want to watch it all unfold. So what’s the next best thing instead of facing something that was so scary? Pretend that it’s not happening that’s what! Being a kid with a wild imagination like I had(still do actually) it’s not such a bad thing to disappear into my head for a bit. In fact I think a child’s greatest tool growing up is a creative imagination. But what happens when you learn to depend on your imaginary world in the face of actual storms of life? What happens when you don’t learn how to face problems head on instead hiding and hoping it blows over without any real damage being done?
The Lord has brought to my attention just how deep this actually runs in my life. How much I lock myself in my own mind when life gets difficult. More than that, how sometimes I get trapped. Imagine a house(my mind) and a storm(reality) so bad that flooding and devastation is the only possible outcome. Instead of facing the reality of the storm and leaving my home to seek safety(like most sane people would) I try to keep the storm and its floods out of my house. For the sake of the analogy let’s just say I somehow manage to keep the floods at bay and save everything in my house. Great right? Not really. Unfortunately it doesn’t change the fact that water is still outside my door and now i’m in a worse situation then I would have been had I sought safety like I should have. I still have to deal with the aftermath. It would have been so much easier to take it as comes and as is rather than pretend that it’s not as bad as it looks and ignore it.
In a nutshell, this is how I have approached life’s problems. Keep the reality of my circumstance from the safety of my mind so I don’t have to deal with it and hope maybe it would take care of itself. I trapped myself so often in something that wasn’t real and never would be real. I thought if I could make up a fantasy in my head that I liked more I could believe in it enough to make it real. But this was never the case. It didn’t matter how much I tried. I was always disappointed and honestly it drove me to stay in my head most of time where everything was safe and wonderful. It got so bad that sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Now, Papa is breaking me of that habit.
So…how did I learned to love storms? How did I learn to respect their power and appreciate them at the same time? By facing them head on. I saw them begin and more than that, I saw them end. I witnessed and experienced them the more I saw the beauty in what they brought in their wake. The more I endured them the more I grew to love them. My love for storms of nature have never translated to the storms of life but I am learning now. Papa is showing me that there is still beauty to be found. That what we tend to think is the worst thing will actually cleanse and refine us in the best way. The best thing, though, is that I don’t have to endure it alone. It doesn’t matter what storms may come, He is right there enduring it with me. When all I can see is pain and suffering, He shows me healing and peace. When all I have is sadness, He gives me Joy. When there Is nothing left for me to hold onto, I know that He is holding on to me. I don’t know that I will ever learn to love the storms that life brings but I do know this…That when everything within me is telling me to be afraid, I will be saying it is well.
Peace and blessings
