What That Week Taught Me
It has been a while now since the ice storm, and I have had time to sort through what it left behind.
Some of it was practical. Check your propane fittings before you need them. Do not store your emergency water outside in winter. Know now which friend would take you and your animals, and ask them before the storm rather than during it.
But the things that actually changed me were not on that list. Here is what stayed.
Faith is what you do, not what you feel
I used to measure my faith by how peaceful I felt. By that measure I failed that week fairly comprehensively.
What I know now is that faith showed up in the asking. Every time I said out loud, where are You, I was admitting I still expected an answer. That is not a lack of faith. That is faith with the polish worn off.
There is a verse I came back to more than any other, from 2 Timothy, about God remaining faithful even when we are faithless, because He cannot deny Himself. I love that verse because it takes the pressure off my performance. There were hours that week when I was not a good example of anything. It did not change who He was.
Hope is a decision you make while afraid
I have written about this before and it is worth repeating.
Hope is not the belief that things are about to improve. There were days when there was no evidence for that at all. Hope was packing the car without knowing how long we would be gone, and driving anyway.
You do not have to see the end to take the next step.
Provision usually arrives as a person
This is the one that genuinely rearranged how I pray.
I kept expecting an answer to arrive directly. What actually happened was a chain of people.
A neighbor Dan had helped hours earlier sent him home with a propane tank. A man I have never met offered us his empty freezer because his employee overheard a conversation. A friend refused to let four pets be a reason we stayed in a freezing house. Hamburgers came from the one restaurant with the lights on, for us and six neighbors.
Every single one came through a person. Not one of them feels like a coincidence to me.
I do not pray the same way anymore. I still ask. But I have stopped telling Him what the answer should look like.
Family is not always the definition on paper
During the hardest week of the last several years, we found out what family actually is.
It is not always blood. It is the people who show up on a side by side with a full tank and do not ask whether it is convenient.
That works both ways, which is the part I try to remember now. If you are the one this week with the working heat and the empty freezer, you might be somebody’s answer.
Small things are not small
After three days without heat or a bath, a hot shower felt like velvet on my skin. I did not want to turn the water off. I think I lost five pounds of dirt and got back most of whatever sanity I had left.
Clean body, clean bed, covers, heat. I had those things every single day of my life before that week and never once noticed them.
I notice now. I hope I always will.
What I would want you to know
If you are in a difficult season, here is the whole of it, as plainly as I can say it.
You do not have to feel strong. You do not have to be grateful faster than you are able. You do not have to have the right words when you pray.
Keep looking. That is all I did. I asked where He was, over and over, and every time I asked, something turned up that I could not have arranged myself.
When you think you cannot go forward, look up.
