Calming the Child

I'm sure everyone's looking for a post here regarding our decision to move or not move to Panama.  Sorry.  We decided to give everyone a few days to recover and digest everything before we discuss it.  But whether or not we go, the trip was definitely worth it.  Church yesterday confirmed this to me.

Our church started a new sermon series yesterday about miracles, and my friend Jeff kicked it off with a sermon about Jesus calming the storm.  He talked about how, as the old saying goes, "Sometimes God calms the storm, and sometimes He calms the child" . . . and both calmings are a miracle.  As my frequent readers may know, I've been taken lately with the idea (not a new one, but one which has been given new life in my spirit recently) that God is not interested in changing the world around us to make our lives easier, but in changing us to make us fit to deal with the world.  Looking back on the last several months, I see evidence of this phenomenon.

I've struggled with depression since I was a teenager.  My natural response to stress, major or minor, is to fall into a pit of despair.  Yet, my husband has been out of work for eight months now, and I've never once found myself in that pit during this time.  We haven't even fought much, which I would have expected with the extra time in each other's faces all day.

By nature, I'm a homebody, a boring middle-aged woman who generally wants comfort, security, and predictability more than anything else.  Adventure has never had much allure for me.  Yet, when my husband brought up this idea of a move out of the country, it stirred my spirit -- aroused visions of a future with him that is nothing like I would ever have desired before, although it's probably a lot like he's always wanted.

As much as I've given lip service to the idea that we were open to homeschooling our daughters through high school if God called us to do so, deep down, I didn't want to.  I felt inadequate to the task and I was ready to give someone else the responsibility.  Yet, with this possible move comes the necessity of homeschooling our eldest again, at least for a time . . . and I've suddenly, inexplicably, gotten very excited about it.  Even to the point of hoping that we can still homeschool her if we stay in the States.

I'm also something of a control freak.  As I said, I like security and predictability, and a lack thereof has always been likely to send me over the edge -- grasping for anything I can put under my thumb, thundering at anything that refuses to submit to my thumb, crying hopelessly over the impotence of my thumb to cover it all.  Yet, I just spent a week in another country, another culture, where I couldn't find things I wanted, couldn't communicate to people what I wanted, couldn't call somebody to get help finding or communicating -- a situation that would have at one time stressed me out completely -- and I had only the occasional brief moment of distress.  I'm not sure I've ever felt so relaxed in the hand of God knowing He was carrying me through.

Many a storm around me these days.  And this child is calm.  A miracle.