Last week, I made a mistake.
A completely unnecessary mistake after all these years of learning from my mistakes and growing in my faith.
Regardless of the strength of my faith or my years of experience, there it was and I wasn’t even sure that I was sorry about it. I still felt a little bit like a teenager in rebellion when I left the ranch with the kids to drive back to Houston yesterday.
It’s been incredibly dry in South Texas and as I made my way north I was completely unprepared to see lightning strikes and dark clouds forming ahead. I hate driving in storms but I really hate it when I have the kids, and I was practically yelling at God in my head, Again! I’ve already been through this. I barely survived the last trek from the ranch because of the thunderstorms.
And you may think I’m a little crazy, that’s fine, I’m used to that, but it’s like that started a long overdue conversation with God this weekend where He responded: Hmmm, instead of asking for protection in a storm, you’re angry? And honestly, if anyone has a right to be angry at anyone right about now, I think that it’s me. That was certainly true. Instead of being a faithful and obedient child, I had run amok.
Well, I asked for forgiveness, asked for some help straightening up my course, and then asked for protection in the storm. And wouldn’t you know it, at EXACTLY SEVEN MILES OUT of Ganado, the storm came. Torrential downpours. Winds. Lightening.
If you read the post in that seven mile link, you’ll know why that seven miles surprised me (and I didn’t even fully realize it was the EXACT spot until I looked up the post for this). It is the exact same place I hit that terrible storm with little bit over Memorial Day. But remarkably, this time around, only four miles later, the clouds cleared, the rain dried up to the occasionally dusting, and blue skies appeared.
This message came clear: The storms will always come. What will change is your response. And the more you trust me, and stay on course, the shorter the storm will be. That last storm lasted well over 30 miles. The storm yesterday lasted four miles. There is no correlation in my behavior then and now, but there certainly is correlation in the message. The mistake I made last week, years ago, could have derailed me for weeks or months or more. I’m still making mistakes, but it only took me two days for a course correction.
My sweet friend Holley Gerth writes about this and she says, No matter what you’ve done, God’s not done with you. Boy is that a truth I was reminded of yesterday. And I’m learning. And the storms are getting shorter.
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