Storms

I love storms! They are beautiful, majestic, mesmerizing, and frightening all at the same time. The beauty of the lightening, the rumble of the thunder, the sound and smell of the rain. The amazing sight of a beautiful, terrifying tornado. The beauty of the amazing clouds. What’s better than that? I say the rainbow following the storms. 

I have not always been that way. When I was younger, I was petrified of storms. I hated them. The unknown of what the storm would do or how bad it would be. The fear of lightening and the loudness of the thunder always had me on guard. Thankfully, I have outgrown those fears.

The storms of life I don’t so much enjoy. They suck greatly bad!

We all have our storms. We all have the way that we react to our storms as well. Believe me, we as Christians, are being watched when it comes to the reaction we have to the storms in our lives.

The season of life that I am in is an exceptionally stormy one. Over the last few years, it has felt as if the storms simply keep rolling in, one after another, after another. It feels as if they are never going to let up. There have been so many changes in my life in the recent past. I have not always responded to them in the best way possible. Other times, I have responded to them in the only way I knew how. And yet other times, I have not responded to them at all. I have simply defaulted back to my fight, flight, or freeze response. My response depends on the type of storm that is happening in my life at the moment.

I have had many, many storms come my way. Once they started rolling in, they didn’t let up. My response with my first storm was to simply live in it. With each one that rolled in after that, my responses were different. Eventually, I got to the point where I would no longer fight. I started wanting to give into the flight part in me but reverted back to the freeze part. When I freeze, I shut down. When I shut down, I’m done. I’m done with people, with situations, with all the crap. Just done! (BTW being in the people business, this is not a good thing.)

I wish I responded to each storm the way that God would have me respond. I wish that I could say that I “let go and let God’. I wish that I was a better person than I am, but I am not. I’m still growing in my faith. I’m still trying to trust people. I’m still trying to figure this crazy thing called life out and my purpose and place in it. 

I am reminded of the story of Jesus on the boat with the disciples in Mark 4:35-40:

“On that day, when evening had come, He told them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the sea.” So they left the crowd and took Him along since He was already in the boat. And other boats were with Him. A fierce windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him up and said to Him, “Teacher! Don’t You care that we’re going to die?”He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Be still!” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Then He said to them, “Why are you fearful? Do you still have no faith?”

There are always going to be storms in our lives. Sometimes we can see them coming, other times they come out of nowhere. Our responses to those storms are how the world will remember us. I promise you that the times that I have responded to the storms in my life in the worse possible way, are the ones that people will remember. You know why? Because those responses are the ones that leave behind the largest path of destruction. I am tired of leaving a path of destruction. I want to leave people better, not worse. I want them to remember me for responding to things the way that God would have me respond to them. I don’t want to question why I am going through that particular storm at the moment, but to have faith that God will bring me through it. That He will calm the seas and the skies. That He will provide the beautiful rainbow in the end.