This week we finally had some rain. It had been cold and dry the whole spring. Clouds would come and go…..but no rain. Finally last Friday the rains came. Not the refreshing long quenching type…..but the turbulent, twisting, blowing type that sends you to the basement and strikes fear in everybody. I watched at our front window as it blew in and when the rain came so fast and ferociously I grabbed the kids and ran to the basement. This always freaks the kids out. Meleah really has no concept of what a tornado is. We try to tell her it’s a really big wind and that we’re safe in the basement. But she talks about it like it must be some giant person coming to get us. So we got rain, and we got a little too much too fast.
I’m feeling a bit like rain is coming at me a little too fast too quick right now. The storms hit and they aren’t letting up. I’m not alone in this storm though…..very rarely are we victims of storms completely to ourselves. A few days ago I wrote that my Aunt Janet was suffering from cancer but they had hopes that chemo and radiation would heal her…..until they found yesterday that it was ravaging through her body and that radiation now will only help with the pain. Hospice is coming. She is in her last days and my heart goes out to my Uncle and my cousins as they watch their wife and mom deteriorate. The storm has hit hard and quick.
Then my mother-in-law is up in New York with her niece Aaron who is in her last days of life. Cancer has ravaged through her young (28 only) body and has never let go. She isn’t able to breath without assistance and each breath is difficult and scares her. Her 4 year old son is watching his mama die.
And a dear friend here in Kalamazoo, Martha, is struggling with breast cancer that has also gone to her lungs. Every week she has her lungs drained of the fluids that build up in them from the cancer. They decided to cease all treatment. The chemo wasn’t working. Today she’s having a private ceremony at our church so she can see her 1st grandbaby dedicated. She desperately wants more time with that baby.
So the storms have come. And we experience the sin and fallen nature of this world in a whole new way. The storms are coming, they are destructive and they aren’t letting up anytime soon.
Isaiah 25:8-9 says this: “They’ll see that You take care of the poor, that You take care of poor people in trouble, provide a warm, dry place in bad weather, provide a cool place when it’s hot. Brutal oppressors are like a winter blizzard and vicious foreigners like high noon in the desert. But You shelter from the storm and shade from the sun, shut mouths of the big-mouthed bullies.”
So these storms strike fear in us. Like children facing a bully. Like Meleah’s thoughts of a tornado. Panic. Fear. Crazy sadness. The kind that hits so deep we think we can’t breath. Indescribable at times. But God’s promised that he will be there amidst the storm. A warm dry place amidst the blowing wind. Cool shade when the heat is unforgiving. He is a parent gently holding a child who doesn’t fully understand what is happening.
He has calmed the storm, walked on water, overcome the grave for you. My prayer is that you will cling to Jesus as you weather these storms. You are not alone.
CLERGYGIRL 