Stepping Into The Wind

Stepping Into The Wind

And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” ~Mark 4:39-41

My three-year-old is sitting beside me, rather than playing upstairs during quiet time, because she is scared of the wind.

She can’t see it or smell it or taste it, but somehow her little mind—-with its tiny pile of experiences—-knows that the wind is a malevolent force.

I have tried to reason with her, to explain that our home shelters her from the wind, and that she has nothing to fear. But my words go unheeded.

She has seen it scatter her paper-light, synthetic eggs all across the deck. She has seen her mother gather said eggs in the tin bucket for the second time and then stick them inside and close the door.

Is separation from leftover Easter eggs not a tragedy? Is this not proof that the wind is bad?

Today, I have no patience for scattered eggs and toddler reasoning, as I too am facing a malevolent force. Today, a neurologist told me that she would like my husband to have scans done to prove he does not have Von Hippel-Lindau: a genetic disease, which mutates the protein that prevents tumors from being created throughout the body.

The disease itself is nowhere in our family history, so that alone places the odds in our favor, but my husband’s rare, benign brain tumor–discovered at such a young age–is worrisome. I would like to say I’m not worried; that faith gives me confidence that everything will be all right.

But my tiny life experience has taught me to be pessimistic when it comes to medical testing. If I brace myself for the worst, when the worst happens, I am prepared.

Therefore, when we returned home this afternoon from Minnesota, I put our seven-month-old daughter down for a nap and sprawled across the bed in the professional clothing I wore to the Mayo Clinic, so I wouldn’t feel intimidated by a group of people with an overabundance of IQ.

My husband came upstairs with our three-year-old, and I listened to them talking quietly in her room. Heedless of my mascara, I buried my face in our white duvet and replayed the words the neurologist had said about our children having a fifty percent chance of the same disease, if my husband indeed has it.

My mind knows he might not have it. That he probably does not have it. But my heart and stomach literally ache with the possibility, so that I want to take my family in my lap and cuddle them until June 11th when my husband goes through a day long of testing.

Regardless of my husband telling me that we are sheltered here—that everything’s going to be all right—I don’t know how to believe him. I don’t know how to overcome fear with faith.

So I must do what my three-year-old daughter does each time she becomes fearful of the wind; the strange, malevolent force she cannot see, smell, or taste.

I must step outside the shelter of my knowledge and my experiences. I must step outside, into the very elements that evoke such fear in me. I must play in the proverbial wind, knowing that the shelter comes not from any medical testing or clean bill of health, but from the shelter of the Most High.

In Him alone I can find my refuge in time of trial. In Him alone I can find my rest. So that is where I am going to go. That is Who I am going to cling to when the wind picks up and the walls of my soul shake.

And then I am going to sleep. I am going to find peace again.

How do you find peace when your life becomes unsettled?