When it Rains, It Pours
I love a good downpour. I love when a hot summer day reroutes our busy day to slow down and stay inside. Against my kids’ liking, I love a stormy day. Easy for me to say, I have never endured a tropical storm. Yet, I can say, life often feels like I am being tossed by the waves. Have you felt this way, tossed by the waves not knowing how to stay afloat?
My day started falling apart. Right away, I caught on. It’s scan week. This is just part of the drill for scan week/oncology appointments/life events/fill in your hurdle.
Attempting to amp myself up, I repeated to myself - Okay, I can do this. Just keep my eyes focused on God. Like Peter kept his gaze on Jesus and walked out to him on the water. Remember Amy, Peter started sinking when he shifted his gaze off of Jesus and onto the blustering wind (Matthew 14:27-30 NIV).
Feeling confident, and expecting the waves, I tried moving forward and recovering my account that was hacked. Etched in my soul were the words, “We will get back to you within forty-eight hours.” As if I was stabbed in the chest, I fell apart. Not being able to contact the company for support, and waiting out the forty-eight hours was torture. I had no control over the situation, nor would any of my efforts be of benefit.
My friend reached out to me while waiting on my scan results, and all I said to her was, “When it rains, it pours.”
And while my life wasn’t under persecution, thank you Jesus for this protection, the spiritual realm we live amongst is like choppy water. The warfare is happening all around us, to keep us from locking eyes with Jesus, whether we are on solid ground or raging water.
The storm intensified into what felt like the ten plagues of Amy’s life.
Eight years ago, I remember my life circumstances following this exact pattern.
My family was moving from Illinois to Michigan. All the things were going well, but out of nowhere some really wonky things started to happen.
One day, I pulled up to my home in Illinois, and I felt that eerie feeling of someone being in my house, when I saw the door to the house left open. Surely the door wasn’t open when I left. It ended up being just a fluke, but I wasn’t having it; especially with my hubby out of town.
The septic system malfunctioned.
High radon levels showed up on inspection reports.
As we prepared to have our house go on the market, we noticed there were a few bees outside on our front porch. So, we mitigated the bees outside, to quickly discover, there were swarms of bees coming in through the walls of our basement. Hello, emergency exterminator fees outside of business hours. We had about thirty-six hours to make it look like there was no sign of buzzing before our first showing.
Buzzing check.
Meowing-not check.
Days before we pulled out of the driveway to embark on our journey moving from Illinois to Michigan, we were eating dinner, and I remember my husband looking up from his plate and avoiding eye contact with me. At the sound of my ears ringing, I knew he knew something I didn’t know. Simultaneously, my appetite drastically changed, and I discovered what my husband had been keeping from me when I heard purring come from the garage. A cat had her kittens in not just any place, in my garage.
Now, before you click the unsubscribe button, I love that you love cats. Go you! I am just not as kind of a person as you. It’s not even that I don’t like cats, I am terrified of cats. So for the final sleeps in our first home, I was terrorized by the real sounds of innocent kittens purring. I even refused to eat at my kitchen table.
It’s happened before that the layers of stress build up during stressful life circumstances. This is what the rollercoaster ride looked like during the most recent round of scans and appointments:
Hack: It would have been nice if the social media hack was a one and done hit. But it wasn’t. The developer locked my account; yet, they allowed the hacker to strike with a vengeance and collect a lot of money from the people I cherish.
Parent teacher conferences that had me wincing at the words coming off the teacher’s mouth as this person described my precious kiddo’s challenges.
My husband was traveling.
I had a crazy idea to teach my son’s preschool class how to sew.
Mad dash to get our sprinkler system blown out on the eve of our first bout with snow.
Kiddos spitting on each other, as if they were running out of emotions to melt through.
You are probably wondering if we moved and acted like there wasn’t a litter of kittens hanging out in the garage. Neither my husband nor I wanted to get involved with a cat and her litter. Surprisingly, we realized the people who work with rescuing kittens and eliminating bees were more terrified than us.
We called for a resolution, and it was in more ways than one uncomfortable for them to improve our situation. This dumbfounded me. I for sure thought confidence and technique was a given for someone in these lines of work. Let’s just say, I have the joy of replaying the vivid memory of two exterminators terrified to spray the bees that were coming out of my basement walls.
Lucky for the people who bought our home, we spent the money to make sure the future homeowners didn’t have any surprises.
This is exactly where God wants me today: trusting that he spent the money to pave my future, so there would be no surprise. He bought me with the blood of his son Jesus. Bought me back from my sin, so that one day I will spend eternity with him. And that’s the kind of home I want to buy, the one with no surprises. That this world will indeed have trouble, but God has already overcome it (John 16:33 NIV).
Praise the Lord, the confidence and assurance I can walk in knowing this truth that I will spend eternity with him, isn’t one of fear, like the exterminator flailing his arms, wincing, and running from the bees.
My confidence is in my Heavenly Father who is not surprised by the chaos of the world. Sometimes life doesn’t bring out the best of me. Still, God is drawing the best of himself out of my life. I just need to depend on him.
While I hate the decay of this world, I love the redemption and restoration that Jesus provides. For that I am truly grateful.
God sees the storms we are in. He is right there with us. We only need to reach out to him in faith that he’s got this.
You’ve got this friend. You can do hard things.
Oh yes, that too - my scan was unremarkable. I am unremarkable. Here’s the reference to these life goals.
