Asleep in the Bottom of the Boat

What do you do when the storm is still raging and your boat is falling apart? Its strange, waves crashing, wind is howling, thunder rolling, and I'm asleep in the bottom of the boat. I know that life, real life, is about encountering things that allows us to understand Jesus, to become more like Him. Think of the feeling of powerlessness and envision the cross, think of rejection and think of the crowd choosing the murderer over Jesus, think of loneliness and think of Jesus in the garden. Countless situations call us to experience what Jesus did while here for us. But asleep in the bottom of the boat? This is not usually me. I'm likely the man standing on the tip top of the mast during a hurricane screaming and shaking my fist at God, daring Him to kill me. But asleep? During a storm? This is just not me. What a strange place I must say again, to be humbled in front of the One I've done battle with all my life.

Now this doesn't mean I don't feel sadness, wave after wave of sadness hit, loss will always be with our family now, and this is okay, it must be okay for I can't change this. I have found peace in the middle of a raging hurricane for the first time in my life. My feet have been planted under me by something beyond me. But this is not so for my wife, an ever growing sadness, depression, a beginning bud of anger, all chaotic for a woman who has lived so controlled her whole life. My wife said yesterday that "I have always done what is right, what is controlled, I don't want to do this right." Now that is a HUGE statement from a woman who has done right for right's sake, all of her life.

It never ceases to amaze me that God can use the same event to call our hearts to be transformed in totally different ways. 10 years ago, maybe even 5 years ago, it would have felt like death to me to move into the place I have found myself. This peace and rest in the midst of a boat destroying storm. The bottom of the boat might as well have been a coffin, it would have been DEATH to me to be there. But my wife, has always been able to find this place, the place where calm reigns and outbursts or anger had no place. She has never fought the storm. Although, she has never been in one this huge. "I've never had loss to this magnitude, nothing even close". So what is going on? It feels like we are walking through this in separate spheres, I can see her and she can see me, but we are definitely not experiencing the same event. God is showing Himself as amazing, showing His commitment to two people separately and together, to transform them separately and together.

For a man who has been so terrified of powerlessness it has been freeing to be powerless in this. For a woman who has been so controlled all her life, God used something far too big for her to control, the life of a baby. (whatever your belief, God either used it, didn't stop it etc) It would feel like death for my wife to feel deeply any emotion, especially rage towards God, overwhelming loss, uncontrollable tears. She would wonder where it would stop, how far would it go, she is moving into uncharted territory. Uncontrolled, uncharted territory.

My heart is moved towards my wife but I know that God is in control again, moving us towards something we can't know or understand. He will work in my wife what He will, He will finish what He has started. Same with me, this work of being asleep in the boat, will perfect something in me that has never been there. Hope in the midst of the unknown, to an acceptance that He is God and I am NOT His peer. I have demanded that position far too long. We are both moving into places seldom seen by each of us, the only thing I have to hold onto is that He has to be there because I would not have chosen this path.

Julie spoke to that yesterday. "I would not have chosen this." My eyes burn with tears right now as I type those words. It is the hardest thing life offers us. These places in our stories where loss has affected us so deeply we would never have chosen. Those things have happened to us, no matter our choice to be a part of that story. These are words deeply rooted in pain and suffering, "I would not have chosen this." And there is nothing I can say. I sit in this boat, asleep, watching my wife staring at that mast, wondering if she will climb, shake her fist in His face. Will this be the thing that frees her heart to be at rest as a sinner in front of the One who loves her most? Will she see that He would love her anyway, whether she chooses cordial rightness or anger filled accusation? I hope she climbs the mast.