THE STORM RAGES, WHAT DO YOU DO?

It’s 5:30 AM and I’ve been awake for a couple of hours.  There’s a thunderstorm raging outside with torrential rain, heavy wind and periodic bursts of the lightening Florida is known for.  Jim, who jokingly says he sleeps the “sleep of the just” is happily zoning away in our bedroom.

Like everyone else, I’m sure, I wake up sometimes with things on my mind that won’t let me rest.  Tonight the storm woke me, but then my mind took over.  My brother is on my mind a lot these days, but there’s also another family issue that troubles me and disturbs my rest.  And then there are the exciting things, like a long anticipated move and furnishing our house.

What do you do when you can’t sleep?  I made coffee and tried reading for a while, hoping it would make me sleepy, but when I went back into bed, my mind was busy and the storm was loud.  So I did what I often do and began to worship the Lord.

Remember the saying, “When you can’t sleep, don’t count sheep, talk to the Shepherd?”  That’s what I do.  Long ago, I hit on what has become such a precious “can’t sleep” activity.  I begin worshiping the Lord for His attributes, beginning with the letter A and working through the alphabet.  I rarely get half way through before my mind lets go of its worries, rests in the awesomeness of my God, and I fall asleep.  I spent time doing that tonight and it was sweet, even if the noise of a storm still robbed me of sleep.

Let me share with you some of my thoughts.

Jesus is Almighty.  Mightier than a storm.  Mighty enough to keep my brother at rest, as if in the calm eye of a hurricane.  Mighty enough to defeat the forces of evil.  Mighty enough to fight all my battles without my having to lift a finger.  Mighty enough to eliminate ameloblastomas.  Mighty enough to change the toughest heart.

Jesus is Beautiful.  Not GQ magazine beautiful, the Bible says there was nothing about Him physically that would attract anyone to Him.  But beautiful in character.  Beautiful in forgiveness, in compassion, in kindness, in mercy, in grace.  So beautiful that He captured the attention of ordinary fishermen, of Mary Magadeline, of Zaccheus, of blind Bartemaus, of little children, of the Centurion whose servant was dying.  So beautiful that the thought of seeing Him one day, of looking into His eyes and seeing His love for me, thrills my soul with anticipation. 

Jesus is compassionate.  He stopped and saw those others ignored.  He touched lepers.  He heard what others didn’t and stopped.  He heard Bartimaus’s cry, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me”, and rewarded his faith by healing his blindness.  Jesus saw the widow of Nain, crying as the pall bearers carried the body of her dead son through the streets and He stopped and gave her back her son.  Jesus sees the situations that keep me up at night, He hears my prayers, and He stops, He answers.

Jesus is divine.  One with the godhead, Jesus enjoyed the intimate, unbroken fellowship of Father and Spirit.  He who made all that was made, who sustains it by His Word, was worshiped by angels.  He sits now at the Father’s right hand, having completed the work He was given to do, and now He intercedes for His own as Mediator and Advocate.  

Jesus is eternal.  He existed before anything that was made was made.  His was the voice that spoke all things into being.  He exists above and beyond time as we know it.  

Jesus is faithful.  Faithful to keep His promises – to never leave or forsake us, to finish the work He’s begun in us, to meet all our needs according to His riches in glory, to cause all things to work for good in our lives, to hear and answer prayer in accordance with His perfect will.

Jesus is gracious.  Lavishly, abundantly, beyond all we could ask or imagine.  We don’t deserve a thing from Him, but He gives to His children anyway because He loves us.

Jesus is holy.  Jesus is beyond me, separate from me in His holiness and perfection.  Jesus is fully righteous, pleasing to the Father in all that He does.  Were it not for His perfect, holy life, He could not have been our substitute in death.  

Jesus is just.  All around I see injustice.  Babies destroyed before they see the light of day.  Children abused.  Crimes committed and criminals go free on a technicality.  Wars begun by those who want what others have.  Poverty that robs young people of a safe childhood and a good education.  Scams that prey on the elderly.  One day Jesus will return and establish His kingdom and His justice shall reign.  

On and on I could go, but you get the idea.

The Bible has a verse that says this: “The joy of the Lord is my strength”.  When I worry, my strength wains.  Troubles are too big for me to carry and impossible for me to resolve.  When I focus on them, I can’t sleep.  My stomach churns, my jaw is sore from clenching it.  But when I focus on Jesus - the joy of knowing Him, the joy of contemplating His person and His character, and all the blessings that are mine because of what He did for me, His joy becomes my strength.  It calms me, increases my faith, and allows my mind and body to rest in the assurance that Jesus is well able to take care of anything the storms of life throw at me.

The storm without and within is quiet now.  I’m going back to bed.

PRAYERS PLEASE!

We’ve been here in southwest Florida now for four months, waiting for the house we’re having built further north to be completed.  We have adjusted well, I think, to living in Florida. We put the move off so long, debating if and when to do it, wondering if we’d like it when we got here, but now that we’re here, it’s really just like home was in New Jersey, without the winter climate.  We still go to the gym, and to church.  We make meals, we visit the library, we read, we do laundry, we clean.  Just the climate has changed.  And we’re really happy we made the move.

Several times in the last couple of weeks when the weather was chilly and gloomy, I found myself longing for my New Jersey “sisters”, some from Montvale Church, others from BSF.   I was seriously missing chats over breakfast at a diner, cups of coffee (and chats) at the kitchen table, fellowship (Bible chats) over a Bible study, prayer together with other women for our kids (chats with God).  It was so hard to feel motivated to do anything.  And all this time of waiting was wearing thin.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take much more, a couple of things happened. Knowing my need to hear voices and news from home, the Lord provided phone calls and e mails this week from some of those sisters.  It was good to hear about what they’d been doing and what was going on in church.  It was good to laugh and it was good to hear them say they were praying for me.  Wow, it really lifted my spirits!

And then yesterday we finally heard from the title company telling us that our house is nearly finished and we need to set a date to close.  This is the news we’ve been waiting for so we could make our final move two and a half hours north to central Florida.  We are overjoyed, making plans to order furniture, clean and move out of the condo and begin a new phase of life.  It’s so exciting.

Alongside this long anticipated joy, we have also had anxiety over a serious family crisis.  A month or so ago, my brother, thinking he was suffering from a sinus infection, visited an ENT and discovered that he had a tumor the size of an egg blocking his nose.  The tumor was removed and it was benign and we thought “Hurrah, the Lord answered our prayers!”, and that he was home free. 

 

It wasn’t long before he heard from the doctor with further news.  What he has is adenoblastoma, a very rare condition that invades the soft tissue and bone.  It typically begins in the jaw and spreads from there.  There are no symptoms, until it begins pressing on things as it grows.  It can be growing for years without any indication of its presence.

He was referred to a dental surgeon in New York City with experience in treating this kind of disease.  This week he went for a CAT scan of his face to determine how much involvement the disease has in his face and jaw.  He doesn’t have full results yet, except that it isn’t in his eye orbit, which is very good news.

I texted my sister in law the other night to tell her our news about the house closing and we then sent several texts back and forth about my brother’s health and the potential this thing has of changing their lives.  They are asking themselves things like, “If this is bad, will he be able to keep working?  Will they have to sell their house?  What if he doesn’t survive the surgery?”  Who wouldn’t be asking those questions in their place?

Suddenly, I felt awful that I was so caught up in my own things that I really hadn’t thought first how difficult a time they were going through before I sent my happy, “We’re closing” news.  How small my longing for friends, and the closing of our house seemed in comparison.

We are confident that the Lord hears and answers prayer.  We've seen Him do that in numerous ways over these weeks for my brother.   

If you are reading this, then I assume you are a praying person.  Would you pray for my brother George?  Would you pray that God, in His mercy and grace, might completely heal him?  Would you pray that He will continue to keep my brother and his family in His perfect peace as they wait to hear from the doctor next week?  Would you pray ultimately that God’s will will be done and that He will be greatly glorified in the outcome?  Thank you!

REACH OUT TO THOSE INTROVERTS!

So I woke up at 2 AM in the middle of a dream.  I had invited some people over for Christmas Eve, but because these particular people had been critical of my cooking in the past, rather than expose myself to some new criticism, I didn’t make anything – nothing at all – to eat.  They were all sitting around with annoyed looks on their faces expecting to be fed while I put on my coat and ran to a very busy supermarket to try and find things for them to eat.  I woke up feeling “less than”, not living up to the expectations of others.

I hoped to go right back to sleep but I didn’t.  As I thought about the dream, I said to myself, “You felt like that a lot when you were young (like in high school or college).”  But then I realized I could think of some much more recent times when I felt that way.  With that, my mind went running off to a few of those other times.  The most painful was the following:

I was sent by the organization for which I worked to a training session in another state.  I was looking forward to the training.  I hoped it would feed my soul as well as equip me for service.  I was housed in a cottage with seven other women, one of whom was assigned to be my roommate.  

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that I am an introvert.  If you know one, then you know we are people who enjoy solitary endeavors.  We’re usually quiet and thoughtful.  When we have a demanding schedule that includes lots of time relating with people, the way we restore our energy is to run away to a quiet place to be alone. 

Since we are outnumbered in this world of ours by extroverts who are the exact opposite of us, we can easily be misunderstood.  Others might take us for snobs, or someone suffering from a superiority complex.  The truth is we’re probably shaking in our shoes with anxiety, wanting nothing more than to be home on the couch in our jammies reading a good book.

 I’ve often told people I would rather get up before an audience of a hundred and speak for an hour than have lunch with four people I don’t know.  So, you can imagine (especially if you are also an introvert) my anxiety as I anticipated the week ahead.  As if it wasn’t enough to just spend a week with a bunch of strangers, we were also encouraged to sit with people we didn’t know and socialize at EVERY meal.  It was both terrifying and exhausting!

Everywhere I went that week in my solitary misery, I watched others.  They all seemed to be doing just fine.  Each one seemed to have made connections with someone else and to be really enjoying themselves.  I was thoroughly miserable, feeling alone in a crowd, terribly self-conscious, feeling very “less than”.  

Adding to the bleakness of the week was my cottage assignment.  I was placed with seven other women who all had many years of experience doing what we did.  I had one year under my belt, and was hugely insecure that if I opened my mouth they would know I was a fraud who had no idea what I was doing.  I made an effort to join them as they sat in the common area to chat, but I said little.  

We introverts are easily intimidated by extroverts.  Extroverts handle themselves so well in social situations.  They never seem to run out of words.  Other people seem to readily take to them.  We want to be able to feel that relaxed too, but it isn’t in our nature.  So we might retreat to a corner, find some other introvert looking equally miserable and engage them in conversation, or get out of there as soon as possible.

As the week went on, I was so uncomfortable that I began to wander away from everyone else whenever I had the chance.  I looked for a quiet room that wasn’t being used, or a bench behind a building where my presence might go unnoticed.  
 

The women with whom I roomed noticed, but not in a good way.  Their noticing didn’t prompt anyone to try and get to know me.  On the last day, they took my name and e mail address along with everyone else’s in our cottage but then one of the women chose to “rate” us all by personality, and send her opinion out on everyone’s e mail, including mine.  I didn’t fare well and was hurt by it.  

Before I resigned from the organization, I went back one more time for training.  I began to pray long before that this time would be different.  I prayed that the Lord would choose women for that cottage with whom I would click, women to whom I could minister.  I asked friends to pray for me as well.  He answered those prayers for me in many wonderful ways.

He placed me in a cottage with all younger women.  This time around I was the one with experience and they were the newbees, shaking in their shoes!  I felt immediately more comfortable.  As the week went on and they shared their personal struggles, and challenges with the job we all did, I was able to pray with them individually and minister God’s love and grace.  I was the last one to leave our cottage for the airport on the last day and I was so full of joy for the Lord’s answer that I spent time walking through each room and praying for the women I’d had the privilege to room with.

Wishing to avoid the pain of sitting in the shadows of social gatherings, being thought a snob when I was just quiet, taking so long to make good friends, I have spent a great deal of my life wishing I was an extrovert so that being with people wasn’t so painful. I’ve learned to be more grateful for the way the Lord made me. 

The Lord had some assignments for me that I would never in a million years have considered as an introvert. Like lecturing to those one hundred women, but also shepherding leaders I didn’t know all that well at first.  It wasn’t hard for the introvert in me to invest long hours alone to plan lessons and leadership training, but it was hard having to BE the leader of my very capable staff!  So many times I felt “less than”, but God in His grace gave me what I needed to be the leader my introversion resisted!  I am the woman I am today because of all those hard and not “natural for an introvert” things He had for me to do.

Our world is full of introverts.  They’re the quiet ones at work or school who eat alone.  They’re the ones who seem to prefer a book to a conversation.  But you know what?  They want to be known for who they are, and loved and appreciated for it too.  They just are less likely to make the move toward others when they want to be friends.

In another month or so Jim and I will move 2 1/2 hours north of where we live now.  I'm still an introvert but as another introvert I know described himself, I'm a "high functioning" introvert, so I will probably have to reach out to others to make friends.  But I also hope others will decide to look past my quietness and want to know the me underneath.

So, look around for those introverts.  If you think, “It might be nice to know him/her", then make the first move.  Say hi.  Ask them questions that require more than a yes or no answer.  Be prepared to keep reaching out until they know that they can trust you with their quietness.  

They just might be longing for someone to notice that they exist and are worth knowing.  Why don't you be the one to notice.