The Storm

The last few weeks…well, the last month or so have been some of the most challenging. I seem to find myself in these places often. The comforts and “guarantees” of the world are stripped away and I find myself fighting for a breath as the waves of this dark world crash over me. The beautiful facade that money and privilege afford society is pulled back and I see Truth. I see this place for what it truly is; dark, ugly, angry, selfish, fearful. I am tempted to build up my walls and be like them. The desire to become cynical rises up, but there is something in me that still calls me to be tender. 

I lost my grandmother this past summer. I watched her pass from this world. It was not pretty or peaceful. It was painful and hard. I knew that in order to help my family with her care I had to shut down a part of myself. I knew that I had to set aside my own loss and pain in order to walk through that place. On the other side of it, alone, I allowed the pain to hit me. 

In obedience, we often think that our path will be smooth, but I have never experienced that. In the path to obedience there has always been challenge, persecution, pain, struggle, and even suffering. I find myself struggling to maintain myself. I am afraid that the circumstances will take me out and that I will no longer be able to be myself. 

To be honest, I didn’t really figure this out until recently. I was lamenting my situation before God and he showed me this fear. He showed me how my deepest fear was not that things were so bad, but that it would never get better. I have always been able to adapt. The true fear came in the idea that I would have to stop being me in order to survive or overcome. 

In the past, that is what I had to do to survive difficult things. I shut down, killed off, or shut up a part of myself in order to live through things. They were hard things, painful things, scary things. Becoming a new person and having those things healed has taken a long time. Allowing someone in, even if that person is God, is not easy. Trusting someone to breathe life back into a part of yourself that you gave up in order to survive is not easy. But as I have been gradually brought back to life, I have realized how much I enjoy being me. I enjoy being the person that he created me to be. When I am truly myself, I don’t want to be anyone else. It is in those moments when I am scared that I will not be free to be myself, that I start to falter and those waves threaten to drown me.

 

I dealt with this even with my kids. They would start acting up and threatening my peace, my safety, my belongings, my comfort, whatever it was. I then have felt like I have to react as one trying to protect his or her very life. How was it that I was feeling so threatened by a toddler? I felt that their behavior would cause others to judge me or hate me. I feared that others would say that I was a bad mom for disciplining too little or too much. The realization that my kids could turn me into someone I didn’t want to be caused me to question how strong of a person I was.

Time and time again, people and circumstances have made me feel threatened and I have had to fight to maintain myself, or at least, that was what I thought. But recently I have wrestled with the concept that I should not be so easily taken-out. 

Peter walked out on the water to meet his Teacher, his friend. He did it because Yeshua said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and tried. He was walking on water until fear took him out. He forgot who he was because he forgot who he trusted. He trusted the waves to do what they do better than he trusted the one who had called him to be greater than the waves. 

When I take my eyes off of the one who called me, made me, healed me, I forget who I am. I fall apart. I lose myself and I find myself drowning. But when I look at him, I see so much more than a God. I see the person that has spent time teaching me and tending to me. The person that has spent time earning my trust when the rest of the world did what it does best and taught me to keep everyone and everything out. 

Yeah, trust makes me vulnerable. Yes, I am soft. I am tender. But that doesn’t have to mean that I am weak. I am with him and he is with me. He is my friend. He is my comfort. He is my hope. If who I am is attached to him, then I will not fall. But if who I am is attached to my circumstances, then all I can do is fight to make sure that my circumstances never put me in a place where I feel threatened. And let me tell you, that really doesn’t work. This world is not a safe place, no matter how much we may try to make it so. This place is not going to just let you be you, no matter how much it may change. 

We fight each other on political and moral views. Other people’s thoughts and opinions threaten us. It makes us feel like we cannot be us. But I have seen what true confidence looks like. I have seen him exemplify it. He is not afraid and He does not feel threatened by what people think of him. He remains himself; strong, but kind. Perhaps, if we focused more on him and made him our hope more than the world around us, we would not feel the need to fight a broken world to maintain our own safety. 

God, may I learn to keep my eyes on you, no matter what the world throws at me. I want to hold tight to you through the storm. I want to be the person that you made me to be, even when the world throws everything at me and tells me I cannot, I should not, be me. Help me to be more like you.