Those of you that are close to me know about the past few weeks and what has been going on. If you don’t know at this point, you will probably not know because the nature of what is happening is so intensely personal that I have only chosen to share it with certain people in the hopes that they will continue to pray.
My first inclination is to call it a storm, but I was thinking this morning that it is not so much a storm as it is the aftermath of the storm. I remember as a seventh grader, looking out my window on the morning of September 22, 1989, as the remnants of Hurricane Hugo, at that time a tropical storm, ripped through my county with 60 mph sustained winds. My mother woke me up, scared because our mobile home was rocking. The power went out and all we could really do was wait for it to come back on .I remember walking outside after it was all over and seeing mobile home under-skirting missing, siding hanging off of mobile homes and houses, and downed power lines. When the power came back on three days later (we were lucky), we learned that our county was among the counties declared a federal disaster area. Images poured across the screen of the extensive damage to the Carolina
I am standing in the aftermath among the ruins of my life. I am trying to pick out the things that are salvageable and discard the things that have been destroyed. I know that I will never be the same again. Perhaps this seems a bit dramatic, especially for those of you that do not know the details, but I do not think it is being overly-dramatic at all. What I, and other members of my family are going through, is akin to the death of a loved one. Having had only one person that I was very close to pass away, my father in 1986 when I was only ten, I do not really have anything else to compare it to.
But this morning, as I write, I want to ease the minds of you who know the details. The pieces are being picked back up. The clean-up process has begun. I am confident that new structures will be put in place. The process of repentance and forgiveness has begun. For some, this may seem like the sky is falling, but after much reflection, I am seeing this not so much as the end of an era, but as the beginning of healing. For the past three years, going on four years, God has been whittling away things in my life that I knew should not be there, things that I was scared to let go of, things that some would say were sin, things that may have compromised my faith. Some things were easy to let go of, but most of them my stubborn heart and flesh just did not want to turn loose. I was too busy pointing fingers at others while never stopping to point the finger at me. While I would admit to some of the blame, I would never admit to it all.
Throughout this past week, there have been moments of anger, moments of fear, moments of grief, moments of hopelessness and moments of extreme sadness. But thankfully enough, for me, there have also been moments of repentance and moments of forgiveness and maybe even more strangely enough, there have also been moments of serenity and moments of peace. There is a new confidence in my heart, a strange sense of purpose, and a still small voice that says that despite my feelings and opinions that everything is crashing down around me, the only thing I really need is God.
I was struck hard this week by this passage in Matthew that talks about Jesus calming the storm. The disciples in the midst of the storm said to Jesus, “Save us, Lord. We are perishing” (Matthew 8:25), but Jesus rebukes the winds and the sea and everything was calm. What struck me is not the incredible power of Christ to calm the storm; what struck me is that the disciples thought they were perishing. I would have loved to have seen the look on Christ’s face when they said to Him “we are perishing.” The reality of the situation was that they weren’t perishing. I’m sure it sure felt like they were. It looked like their world was crashing down around them and they were not sure they were going to see another day, but the reality was that Jesus was in the boat with them. What I took from this is that when I looked at God so many times in the past three years, in the past six weeks, and even more specifically, in the past week, and said to Him, “I am dying! Help me!” the truth was that I was never really dying at all, that my life was also safe and secure as long as I had Jesus with me in the boat, that what was really happening is that He was using circumstances in my life to draw me closer to Him.
I certainly do not want to make this sound trite. If you excuse my bluntness, what I and my family are going through hurts like hell and this is certainly not all about me, but we are not dying. I am safe and secure despite everything going on around me and I have no doubt that no matter the outcome of the aftermath, I will be right where God wants me, if I keep in mind that I am His covenant child and nothing, not even the gates of hell, can change that.
For those of my friends and family that do not know what is going on, I can only ask of you that you pray. Simply pray for me and my family. For those of my friends and family that do know, please also pray. Your support and your very presence mean so much to me right now that mere words cannot contain my gratitude. Your love and support have been the hands of Christ that have held me during this time.
I do not know what the full outcome of the aftermath will be, but perhaps unbelievably to some of you, I am actually grateful for the clarity that God has given me in the past week. All the things that I thought were so important…they just aren’t. What is important is that my life is on the altar…once again…for God to use however He wants to.
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