The Eye of The Storm

How did God decide how to write the stars in the universe, how to plant the trees in the vast land, how to create this life we now experience as our own? Here I am, pondering, and wondering just what to write. Such a simple thing when placed next to the wondrous task of creating our universe. It reminds me again, just how thankful I am for a Creator, who knows perfectly how to give.

I would say, with all the experiences I have had in the past year, my soul has deepened immensely, and my character has grown so much. I am a completely different person than I was 10 years ago, and even far different than I was only 1 year ago. Trials and adversity pull at us daily, sometimes harder than others. It is in that pulling that we can find our greatest beauty. The most majestic calm is the one found in the eye of the storm. How entrancing, and mysterious a thing it is to find peace in such a state as this- a storm of our own life. And, though the pains I’ve borne in my life felt like they would crush me at times, now I can clearly see, how they have shaped me and made me greater today than I was before. We are all incredible beings! The mere fact that, in such woeful times, our minds learn to adapt and find a new way of experiencing peace, so we can again survive and eventually thrive, is incredible to me, and a testament of just how resilient we, as human beings truly are. 

Incredible as it may be, thriving and surviving hasn’t come to me through explosive steps, or profound revelatory experience. Rather, it has come, one step at a time. From one moment to the next, in the simplest of ways. It has come through a creative eye, willing to recognize that when the equation of life changes, I need to change along with that equation. It has come in thinking smarter rather than harder, when I realize my engine is not as strong or capable as it once was. It has come through letting go of what matters least, and clinging onto what matters most. It has come through inviting thoughts of love and positivity no matter what was going on, through hoping when all hope seemed gone. In short, it has come from recognizing the need to adapt to the storms of life. By carefully and gradually adapting, with patience, I have found that even when, at times, I felt like I was Just surviving, looking back, I see that often I was truly thriving. There, through that storm, peace and joy was found. 

Joy, I’ve learned, comes not in the peace that surrounds us but in the love that abounds within us. 

In forgiving, when a friend or relative does something terribly wrong. In loving, when one can not understand why some people do what they do.  In hoping when the future appears hazy and bleak. Even, sometimes, in crying for the loved one who is gone. Joy comes in the song of little children as they dance and play, while mom and dad choose to join along. Joy comes in quiet moments of knowing it is going to be okay. Joy comes...ESPECIALLY...when hope seems lost, light seems gone...and through a pleading cry...God hears that quiet prayer...and fills the heart with a peace that is incomparable to any other, one could ever know or feel. 

It is this kind of joy and peace, that comes in the eye of the storm that has strengthened me, taught me and filled me more than any other kind. So, dear friend, If you care to try, quiet your heart, still your mind, in the midst of your storm and find that inner peace that surpasses understanding and transcends all of time. There is a promise, from one mightier than I, that if you turn inward and upward, relying on the merits of Christ, you will, invariably, find that kind of majestic peace, that can only be found within the eye of the storm.

Yours truly,

Signed,

Me.

Feb 10-17,  2019