Storms of Life

As I reflect on the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking of how this experience compared with other things that have happened in our lives. My Dad passed away when I was 16. That was a destructive hurricane. It changed so much about our every day lives. God was faithful then although I was angry that He took my Dad. It made my college years less than I wish they would have been. I didn't drink or party but it wasn't a time of growth. After we had been married a few years, we decided to try to have a baby. Should be easy, right? They made birth control pills to keep that from happening. That's easy, surely getting pregnant would be too. Nope, another destructive hurricane. I had three goals in life coming out of high school/college.... 1) Get married 2) Teach school and 3) be a stay at home Mom. It seemed like the first two were relatively easy but that 3rd one taught me that I didn't have control. I couldn't make it happen any quicker with anything I did. I had to trust that God's plan was ultimately for my good even though it absolutely broke my heart for Him to withhold that for 4 years. I made a choice, though, to go to Him with my emotions and frustrations instead of running away like I did after my Daddy died. I wouldn't trade those 4 years for anything.

I've heard many times that if you aren't in the middle of a trial that one is coming. We have been in a period of blessing, answered prayers & joy. Just the normal day to day stresses of being a family of 5. I'd say that this recent "storm" is kind of like a summer thunderstorm. It came on suddenly, there were tornado warnings but no watches; it was scary in the moment but the outlook is a sunny afternoon. Now, Ken doesn't like saying that rain is a bad thing (thinking in particular about the song "Jesus, Bring the Rain"). In a more agrarian culture, rain is a good and necessary thing. Crops don't grow without it. It's been my experience that spiritual growth tends to be the most vibrant when we're in the midst of a storm.

When I hear someone else say that they have peace during a storm, sometimes I think that means that they don't struggle with any fear. I don't think that's the case. Just read Psalms... in one half of the chapter David is crying out to God about his enemies and at the end he praises God for keeping him safe. Since we have been the ones with Lincoln during and after these seizures, we've seen how he bounces back. We've talked to the doctors and heard the good news directly from them. In general, I'm not really worried but I am a little on edge. I'm still a little antsy if Lincoln does weird things or makes weird noises. I had a hard time falling asleep on Tuesday night because I was afraid he'd have another seizure. Little noises that wouldn't usually startle me at night wake me up for good. I am confident that will get better as time passes and we get back to "normal".