God’s Grace in the Storm

I’ve been afraid of everything most of my life. I mean everything. I even know where it started.

I survived the April 10, 1979 Texas tornado outbreak as a child and my little heart struggled so much afterwards that fear and anxiety became a part of my personality and shaped my life no matter how hard I tried to recover from it. 

In 2016, my husband was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma cancer. Terminal cancer at that! The fear and anxiety I felt were incomprehensible. We were only 48! Our oldest daughter had just gotten married two weeks prior and was half-way through college. Our other daughter was 6 months away from graduating high school. Our lives were changing fast and we had amazing plans for our future! We had a lot of life to live!

Our family had been through some tough and scary times before, but cancer???? My biggest fears were coming true and I didn’t know how to deal. I was scared out of my mind.

 BUT GOD

God made me face those fears head on:  Carl’s diagnosis, chemo treatments, a Stem Cell Transplant two hours away in Dallas. Driving in Dallas. Staying in an apartment after treatment in Dallas. Doing all kinds of things by myself…in Dallas. And storms.

These are not at the top of my “bucket list” of things to do. Ever! And yet, I was about to learn a lesson of a lifetime in it all.

Carl was released from the hospital just as a summer thunderstorm rolled in. Did I mention I am scared of storms…or driving in Dallas…or driving in storms in Dallas?

It wouldn’t have been such a big deal since the apartment was literally 1.5 miles from the hospital except for the fact that Carl needed Benadryl and I needed to get him to the apartment and go to the store before the storm hit.

A pile of dread fell on me as I zipped up my coat of fear and anxiety snug and tight around my heart.

I drove like an Indy 500 racer back to the apartment, basically kicked my weak, recovering-from-transplant husband out of the car to find his own way to the front door, and then sped off to the store that I could literally see right down the street.

In a panic and out of breath, I grabbed a buggy, flung my 10 items or less in the basket without stopping, and slid into the checkout line to the tune of a tremendous clap of thunder…and the biggest drops of rain I had ever seen.  

I seriously believed that I could hurry and throw my four grocery bags in the backseat of my car and drive two-tenths of a mile back to the apartment and get in before the storm unleashed its full fury.

Just as I’m leaving the store, it starts to get windy. Not like the everyday, 30 mile an hour Texas breezes we get on a daily basis; but the kind of wind that sends trash cans down the street to visit the neighbors, makes dogs run and hide under the porch, and Texans to mosey outside to catch a glimpse.  

Any idea what that kind of wind can do with giant drops of rain?

I couldn’t see a thing! But with my heart pounding, my heavy purse on my shoulder, and my keys in hand, I splashed the buggy all the way to my car. I grabbed two of the four bags, unlocked the car, and threw them in the back seat. I turned back to the buggy and grabbed the other two bags, turned back to my car, and wouldn’t you know it…the wind had now blown the car door shut!

As I reach for the handle, somehow the key fob I’m holding gets tangled up with the bags and I lock the doors!

I cannot for the life of me find the unlock button!

So, I’m standing there in the “Hurrica-nado”, soaking wet, hair plastered to my face, holding a purse, two bags, clicking every button I can feel on my key fob through the bags yelling, “Seriously? SERIOUSLY? You have GOT to be kidding me!”

I then notice a highly amused man in a truck next to me giggling like a school girl. Great, now I had an audience too!

Finally, by some miracle, my frantic pushing of the car fob unlocks the doors and I head to the apartment where I sit shivering in my car trying to decide if I had enough energy to cry.

Once the rain lets up, not stops, but slows to Category 1 Hurricane status, I get my groceries, wade through ankle deep puddles, and somehow manage to get to the apartment without getting hit by lightning.

I was soaking wet… but I had the medicine, I was inside, and finally out of the storm.

I heard God say in my heart, “See, that wasn’t so bad…was it? You didn’t need to have fear or anxiety about it. You know why? I was with you the whole time.”

Sometimes, whether you like it or not, you are going to face the storms head on that you prayed God would not let you go through.

Sometimes you make it to the car before the storm hits and sometimes you lock yourself out and stand there soaking wet yelling at your keys.

I didn’t want my husband to have cancer. I didn’t want chemo, transplants, hospital stays, apartments, driving in Dallas, or storms! I wanted God to take it all away and spare me from the storms of this life!

But I learned a very valuable lesson that day about God’s grace in the storm.

He may not take the storms away, but the rain washes away fears and anxieties beneath the heavy downpour of His grace.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

(2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

I am nothing without His grace and it is by His grace alone that I’m able to stand in the storms with all of my weaknesses, faults, and failures.

I am weak. He is my strength. His grace is sufficient.

He will be with you through all of the storms on your path. Trust Him. Praise Him. Give yourself totally to Him and let His waterfall of grace wash over you time and time again.

Soli Deo Gloria

Laura