Prayer during the storm.featured

There are rare days when my soul is the sunrise. Young. New. Bursting with light. Exultant with joy. Brimming with promise.

Most days, my soul is the sunset. Calm. At peace. The bright distinctions of day blurring gently in warm strokes of pink and purple as the deepest blue ushers in soft starlight. Complete.

Today, my soul is the hurricane.

Anxieties, frustrations, and questions crashing like waves against my mind. Wind battering the walls and foundations of my spirit.

Must the body you made to carry, birth, and sustain children weaken and break? A loathsome disease running rampant even as I bring a new life into the world?

The mind you filled with words and story become foggy? Less adept at capturing and communicating your mercy in the moments I grasp it most clearly?

The eyes you taught to find the immense beauty in this broken and lovely creation be closed?

Why give me the vocation of marriage only to watch me ripped from the soul and body that are joined by sacrament to my own?

Give us children and allow their tender souls to witness every excruciating page of this tragedy? Stripping my ability to guard their innocence.

If I must bear this cross, so be it. But those I love. They carry it simply by loving me. A cruel reward for a selfless act.

Yet even in the deafening roar, I hear your voice. “I am with you always.”

My breath eases as I remind myself that this is not an elaborate ruse to destroy what you made good.

I am not victim to an author whose story requires my destruction. I am the recipient of a story written for my salvation.

He does not will or require my suffering. But He has redeemed it.

And in that redemption He brings light and beauty to even the darkest depths of my brokenness.

My eyes become quicker to see and my soul to absorb every moment of this grace.

Even as my soul longs for a return to the warmth and peace of sunset, it eagerly awaits the unveiling of all things new ushered in by the storm.