Cloudy With a Chance of Yuckiness

What a week or, should I say, past couple of months.  Things have been anything but “normal” for my myself, my family, friends, church…

Sometimes it is easy to look at circumstances that are “out of the ordinary” or “tough” as a black cloud hanging over our heads.  Actually it is impossible not to think of it that way sometimes.

One of these black clouds has hung very low and heavy on us this week.

This past Saturday, my church experienced the death of one of our church members.  This church member was not elderly, was not sick, was definitely not “expected“ to die.

While working on his message for the next morning, my husband Rodney received the first of several calls at 9pm this past Saturday night.  One of our church members had been shot.  That is all of the news that we had at the time. No details.   The phone call ended and both of us sat in our living room in disbelief.  Shot?  The phone rang again about 20 minutes later and we were told that he had passed away.

I drove up to the visitation and funeral tonight and it was obvious that the scheduled two hour visitation was easily going to turn into a 3-4 hour visitation.  It was amazing to see how many people this one man and his family have impacted with their love and their lives.  The epitome of  love for this family stood in a line that stretched through a very large church parking lot, through the long hallways of a church, and down the aisle of the sanctuary waiting to give their condolences to the family.

And that is when my black cloud hovered over me and I asked myself  when is all of this “bad stuff” going to end?!  When is enough really enough?

My natural pushback is to sit in sadness and fear through these times. But that’s just it.  That is what I naturally want to do!

And that is in all of us. Our own pushback, fallback, I‘m-in-control-of-the-situation attitude. That “whatever you want to call it” is trying to take control, which ultimately means we start doing life all alone!

As I sit here writing this blog, <insert churchy word> conviction rains down on me, cutting through my thoughts …I am not alone! And before you roll your eyes at the “expected churchy response”, I mean that whole-heartedly. I am not alone.

Without God looking out for me during all of my “yuck” times, what would I do and who would I turn to when the skies open up and my black cloud pours?  Really pours?

So as I sit here with that comfort through all of these hard times the past couple of months, I can only ask myself a couple of things:

What am I learning through all of this?  And  then most importantly, how is this going to grow and strengthen myself, family, friends and church in their relationship with the only one who is really able to take on our sadness, burdens, and fear and turn it into a deeper relationship with Him?