The Eye of the Storm

I've been talking about hurricanes a lot.

Describing God's faithfulness in the eye of the storm. Telling harrowing tales of floods and evacuations.

Today God had something to tell me about hurricanes.

At the end of the service at my church, there's always the invitation to come up and receive prayer. You can receive prayer specifically pertaining to the message--today it was about knowing and experiencing God—and you can receive prayer on absolutely anything that needs prayer in your life. That's one of the (many, many) things I love about my church.

Today I went up for prayer.

I asked the woman who prayed for me to pray for vision regarding a decision I've been wrestling with for the past several months. I was asking for vision, but I was wanting answers, wanting God-given permission to do what I already know I want to do.

The woman had a vision for me:

"I'm getting a picture of a tornado or some kind of storm or cyclone. I don't know why but I feel like God is saying that he is with you in the eye of the storm."

Sheesh. Talk about apropos.*

I don't think any metaphor could have spoken more strongly to me today.

This woman knows me, prays for me every day and I serve with her at church. But she didn't know I had just gone to North Carolina. She didn't know I was just in a hurricane. She didn't know I had just experienced God's loving presence in the eye of the storm.

That was the glory and the voice of God. Reminding me that he's here. In the midst of the storms and the decisions.

I must admit my gut reaction is to yell, "Then get me out of the freakin hurricane!"

But his answer is different, although not something that I don't know. In fact, I've been writing about and thinking about and working this metaphor out in my mind with great fervor this past week. My last blog post talked specifically about God's grace in the storm. I said, "in the eye of the hurricane, I experienced peace, rest, and the richness of time spent with family."

What I'd like to add now is....and God. I experienced God in the eye of the storm. Literally this last week, and he wants me to experience him now. Before the storm has passed, before the decisions are made, before all my duckies are in a row.

As I seek answers, he seeks relationship.

I think that about sums it up. This is a lesson I'm going to have to learn and relearn and learn again. And, hey, I think it's pretty incredible that God's using his church body to speak into my life. To remind me that he's here with me in the eye of the storm.

And all I can say is thank you.

*Cameron, apropos means this was a very timely and opportune response. I will be initiating Big Word Wednesday this week, too.

Hope in a Hurricane

“Aly, get up! We need to move next door!” my cousin yelled to me in the 5 a.m. darkness of the storm. In mere minutes I was on my way to higher ground, sludging through thigh high water in pj pants, socks, and my cute new flats while carrying my laptop and everything I could scramble into my backpack lit by the dim glow of my cell phone.

I spent the last week on “vacation” visiting relatives near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. If you’re thinking “Outer banks, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard that recently?” That’s right, the Outer banks was where hurricane Irene made landfall early, early Saturday morning.

After a day of boarding up houses, taking down porch swings, relocating porch plants to a card table in the living room, and driving cars and trucks to higher ground, you would have thought I’d sleep like a baby. But as the wind howled outside my window and the power flickered the air conditioning on and off, I couldn’t sleep. In my near dreaming delirium, I half expected waves of floodwater to crash through my windows at any moment. When I finally slept, it was short lived.

Although I had been excited for the adventure, I have to admit I was pretty scared when I took that first dark step into the front yard water, debris and downed tree limbs floating by, the propane tank bobbing in the waves. Once I reached the safe (and higher) haven of my relative’s home next door, there was nothing much left for me to do but dry off and wait.

Wait and hope and pray that the tidewaters would stop their threatening surge. That the howling and the wind and the waves crashing on the doorstep (ocean waves on the doorstep?!) would recede. That the salty water wouldn’t seep into my cousin’s home, destroying floors and carpets, refrigerators and valuables.

In the midst of the waiting and the hoping and praying, God doled out another unwarranted fit of compassion. Because in addition to wind and waves and fear, that day, in the eye of the hurricane, I experienced peace, rest, and the richness of time spent with family.

The rising tide meant we couldn’t go anywhere. I was trapped. Trapped with my wonderful family, including my new favorite human being: my cousin’s baby boy, Macon. (see left and tell me you don’t agree) Poor me.

In addition to babbling baby time, I also had time to rest. To rest and reflect and spend time in prayer. To dream and scheme and breathe.

And while I was journaling and reflecting, I was able to connect with my cousin’s grandmother (my cousin’s grandmother on the other side, so no direct relation to me). She saw me reading and journaling, and asked if I was writing my prayers, which I was. From there we bonded over our love of words and writing, of putting our thoughts and hopes and dreams on paper. She read me poems she’d written for her grandchildren and spoke to me of the lessons she’s still learning as a great grandmother and daughter of God. She read me notes of encouragement and spoke words of love and affirmation into my own life.

I don’t know how to write about her without sounding too cheesy or sweet, but there really is no other way to describe the day and the time spent with her as sweet, filling, and life-giving in a way I can’t explain. It was yellow cake and chocolate frosting (which we ate later that day in celebration of surviving the hurricane) good.

As the eye of the hurricane moved closer, calming the swaying trees and lulling the misplaced tide, I was reminded of the line in my favorite T.S. Eliot poem that says, “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

In the darkness of the storm and the stillness of the day indoors, my heart was dancing.

*Below are a few pics taken from the day of the storm. Also, I am very thankful to report that despite some minor damages to my cousin's house--her air conditioning and water pump were broken, her husband's truck flooded--none of my many, many family members in down east North Carolina had floodwater enter their homes.

My cousin Mollie's husband, Matt, forging the floodwaters.

The water rising in the garage--and the boots that would have served me much better than my nice flats for an early morning dip in the ocean.

The steeple of my family's church that was knocked down in the storm.

A tree uprooted in the storm.

More photos and stories to come!

Living a Better Story

I came at Christianity backwards. Well, more like God came to me. Unexpected and unannounced.

The stories I used to believe about myself were awful. Depressing, really. I can’t even look back through my old journals without feeling a complete sense of despair.

I told myself stories of how dumb I was. How ugly. How boring. How awful. I was never good enough. Even in my relationship with God I wasn’t good enough.

I used to wonder why I wasn't in love with Jesus the way other people seemed to be. I felt really guilty about it. In fact, I felt pretty guilty about everything. How I wasn't nice enough. Outgoing enough. Christian enough. Happy enough. (anyone sensing an introvert complex yet?) Instead I was too shy. Too scared. Too selfish. Too....human.

When I came back from a study abroad experience in Costa Rica, I was wrecked. After a semester of poverty tours, angry rants, and guilt trips, the conflicting stories became too much bear.

I stopped telling myself any stories. The stories reduced themselves to apathy, disengagement, disconnection.

Silence.

But out of the frightening silence of the months I spent in numbness and isolation, unable to find my worth and validation in my schoolwork, my religion, or friend’s and family’s approval, came an acceptance of self that I had never known. The emptiness of not caring, though scary and unproductive, gradually opened into space for peace and self-acceptance and even joy.

Only when the stories of self-hatred, doubt, and condemnation were silenced, could God actually speak. Although I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) identify God as the source, something began to tell me stories of love and grace. That maybe the salvation of the world didn’t hinge completely on me. That maybe there was something good and worthy inside of me after all.

Only after I began to hear this new story did I actually start to live like I was loved, like I was forgiven. And only after months of living in the kind of freedom I'd never dreamed of, did I finally begin to believe that maybe there is a loving God. That maybe it was the God of love who made me free, who was there loving me all along.

Don't worry, it sounds weird and new-agey even to me. But the beauty of God is that he knows me. He knew I didn't need another formula or piece of intellectual information to believe in. He knew I needed to experience his truth and freedom before I could ever believe it.

My relationship with God is inseparable from my journey to love myself, to believe a better story about myself and this world. The verse, "We love because he first loved us," (1 John 4:19) could not explain it any better.

And that is the new story I’m learning to live.