The day before my daughter’s 6th birthday, and coincidentally, my husband’s birthday as well, I was home alone with two children–my little girl and her stepbrother, who was close to turning 7. I was also carrying my daughter, Mia, at 4 months pregnant, and my husband was at work overnight with an emergency preparedness crew with the fire department. It was 2020, and we had already faced the COVID pandemic at this point, but this was a different attack. The weather channel talked rapidly about Hurricane Sally, as it was expected to hit Alabama at night. Being from Florida, the idea of a hurricane was not new to me, but I hadn’t experienced it alone, with the responsibility of three children yet. It will never matter how prepared I felt whenever I remember that experience.

I wasn’t prepared for it.

I wanted to pretend that I wasn’t nervous, that nightfall bringing the loss of power and dwindling cell phone batteries and wincing at the sounds crashing outside under the light of burning candles was not that bad. That the continuous train barreling through the neighborhood was something I had expected, and that the looks of those terrified children, out of their beds with fear at midnight, were something I could soothe. I had no answers for them. Controlling my expressions ahead of their expectant gazes was more difficult than they’ll ever know. Lightening would strike, thunder shook the house, and my daughter in utero would jump. She didn’t even know what awaited in this world yet, but she knew part of it didn’t sound safe, and I had no sincere way to calm her yet.

When they finally fell asleep, I still couldn’t. I don’t remember how I actually fell asleep — hoping for the best, praying for mercy and protection at what we couldn’t see. At some point during the night, I did sleep. When I arose, foggy and displaced from what we had just experienced, I was up to see my cell phone with 3% battery life left and about 26 missing phone calls and texts. I would get back to them, but first I had to see the damage. I had to know if we still had a car, if there was a hole in my ceiling, where rain had saturated the floors, or if windows were broken.

The back door was barricaded by water puddles, seeping into the dining room without permission or reservation. When I opened the back door, a tree was on the house to the point that I couldn’t see anything but jungle through the door, nor could I open the screen door to the outside. At a window, I saw the roots ripped from their place in the earth with fury, to multiple trees, the bellies of their nutrient systems on profound display. I imagined the bewilderment the trees felt, the steadfast approach to the usual southern winds, but the defeat of being overpowered in shock. The wooden playground set that my husband had built for our children was severed in three places by a tree.

I went to another door and walked out into the front yard, to the edge of my driveway, and stood in the street. There was no where to look that was untouched by the rage of wind and water. It was that feeling in action movies, when you see the lead character in shock, where the world’s ending and everyone came out of their bunkers to see nothing left. Powerlines in mangled messes, light and power poles snapped like toothpicks, splintered and blown apart at the center–other neighbors looking around with the same shocked, surprised, and grateful look I had–grateful to be alive. My neighborhood was the only one in my area that looked destroyed the way it did. Other places south of us were destroyed. The roads around ours were okay, but our neighborhood looked like a bomb had gone off. Tornadoes ripped and roared through the night, but God provided. He kept those three babies safe when I felt helpless to do it myself. He brought them comfort enough to fall asleep despite my raging fear and overwhelm.

When it was over, when we were all together again and safe, I sat in my closet on the floor and cried until my insides hurt.

The next day, we celebrated my daughter and husband’s birthdays. Not with birthday parties and balloons or even birthday cake, but with thanksgiving that we were together. We celebrated from air mattresses and couch beds in the living room, windows open, fans blowing, and generators roaring through the neighborhood, and so much love in our hearts. I remember the songs of birds started slowly emerging from the trees again.

I think about the significance of coming to God in prayer. Petitioning Him out of fear or worry, and the devotion we bring to Him in our moment of need. It’s so easy to derail what we know is right and good out of desires, selfishness, fear, and worry. The nature of redemption is not that we have to live perfectly, but with our hearts pursuing God, the rest should come more often than not. When we worry and grow upset or frustrated or fearful, we are doing it from a place of lacking faith. We are telling God that we don’t think He’s got this.

2 Timothy 2:12-14 says:

“If we endure,
    we will also reign with Him.
If we disown Him,
    He will also disown us;
 if we are faithless,
    He remains faithful,
    for He cannot disown himself.”

He is with us, and we are with Him.

I spent the next several weeks in a standstill. Everything I had been worrying about and focusing seemed so meaningless. I started embracing life in different ways. I always wanted to cook authentic Mexican food, to connect to my ancestry in some way that I could, and I started diving deep into a wealth of knowledge, trying to learn. I wanted to start embroidering authentic Mexican-styled pieces and donate percentages of proceeds to domestic violence shelters. I had these ideas about my life and suddenly putting everything off for the sake of being busy became less important. Little did I know, these things would soon become a valuable component in my life moving forward.

Fear may be one reason we turn away from God but another is weakness. We fall short in our faith, in our actions, in our prayer, and in our relationships because we make choices. Despite the reasoning for those choices, they draw us further away from God and His path for us.

Simon Peter is such a fascinating disciple. He takes quite a bit of criticism sometimes, and I think largely because he represents so many of us in himself. We couldn’t imagine denying Jesus three times. To not acknowledge we know Him, to disown Him, in a sense–it seems unconscionable. Peter was weak in that moment, but he was also afraid for his life. Our circumstances are not missing to God, nor the motivations for our actions.

In Luke 22:31, the Jesus says, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat,” to set him apart, to break him down, in a sense. Peter was unprepared, fearful, and weak in his faith during those tumultuous circumstances. He was the perfect target. He was also every single one of us. You may say, “I would never have denied Jesus.” But you do–I do–every time we turn away from God, every time we ignore Jesus’s teachings, every time we try to grip sand so tightly that we panic when it naturally flows through our fingers.

One day, my daughter and I had left the grocery store, and she threw the most escalated, major tantrum leaving the store. It lasted until we got home, I had to take her out of the car, still throwing her fit, neighbors all around, and into the house, she continued. She ended up locking herself in her room on accident, and while I tried to figure out how to fix her problematic door handle until her stepdad came home, I sat a glass baking dish on a hot stove eye that shattered across my entire kitchen (ruined dessert included). My parents were leaving for a trip to Alaska and had just called to tell me goodbye, and my husband came home telling me about a possible deployment he may have to go on in the Air Force.

In the middle of my kitchen, spatula in hand, I started to cry. We go from moments of gratitude and faithfulness to this backsliding effect, like ants rolling down a driveway after a summer rain, somehow surprised by it all. I realized this need for control that I didn’t have and a lack of faith in God where it should have been. There is actually a better word for it: Weakness.

It isn’t news to God. There are no surprises to Him. He already knows we struggle. He knows we want to control things, but He loves us through it. He doesn’t take pain away in every circumstance, but He does give grace amidst the tribulation. He blesses and comforts. He restores and heals. He cares about our character and our growth. The Bible says that He is made perfect in our weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

It’s natural to want to problem solve. Peter returned to fishing after he denied Jesus. I imagine he had a difficult time with that choice, knowing Jesus predicted it and he argued so vehemently that he would never deny Him. Then he did it three times and wept bitterly. I absolutely LOVE the interaction between Jesus and Peter after the resurrection. Jesus does not reprimand Peter for making a mistake multiple times. He doesn’t question Peter’s loyalty or love for Him. He doesn’t say what Peter has to do in order to fix their relationship, his ministry, or the perception God has of him. The Messiah approaches the fishermen at the shore and offers them breakfast. He loves and serves them. He gives them guidance and commands them to move the kingdom of God forward.

Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him three times, and tells him to “Feed my sheep. Follow Me.” He reinstates Simon Peter as “the rock,” and the understanding of true forgiveness and redemptive love is met by the relentless pursuit of evangelism. Peter’s life changes forever.

Jesus knows where the core of your heart lies. Just like with Nathaniel–“under the fig tree” was significant to Nathaniel and whatever he read, prayed, or studied in Scripture in that circumstance. Jesus let Nathaniel know that He heard his prayers. He saw him, He knows his heart. This is profound to Nathaniel, who had just asked “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” prior to meeting Jesus.

John 1:47-48

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael said to Him, ‘How do You know me?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.'”

Coming to God, knowing His mercy, love, and grace, is deliverance for your soul. He takes those moments where nothing else–no song, poetry, relationship, or band-aid–can heal your hurt, where you feel no way out, where your head, arms, and chest are collectively under water, and He says it’s not too much for Him. He doesn’t find you unapproachable or insufferable. He finds you lovable, even when you push His grace to the side for a solution that will never arrive.

Sarah Kay wrote:

“There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.”

Deuteronomy 31:8 says, “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

The waters will continue to rise, but we have to find that place of comfort, of peace, the dwelling place of the Lord–not forgetting His Holy Spirit is within us and among us, and we have to faithfully follow Him to experience His blessings, both in the prayers that go answered, and the prayers we have answered that we never knew we needed to pray.

“When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.”

Isaiah 43:2

His promises are eternal and unchanging, His mercies new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). Be encouraged, be refreshed, stay faithful in the Author and Finisher of our faith. He is with you. Amen.

God bless you,

M