The Eye of the Storm

I've always heard that in the eye of a hurricane, there is calm. Things are chatic outside of that circle, but the inside is still. I think that's the way life is sometimes. To discover your comfort, peace and tranquility, you have to find the eye of the storm. Of course, that means you have to actually go through part of the storm to get there, and then go through the storm on the way out.

As previously posted, our Spring was jammed packed. In fact, before that, our Winter and Fall were packed. Go back even further to last Spring, Wild Man made his arrival. We haven't slowed down since. I'm going to be honest, at the end of this past school year, we were spent. Emotionally, physically and mentally drained. We were in desperate need of a get away. You see, even though we had been on trips with FFA, that's not a get away. (Can I get an "Amen" from all you who work with youth on a regular basis?) We needed to be refreshed, renewed and truly relax and unwind. Our sanity depended on it. However, there was a problem. Jeremy is required to work most of the summer. I won't get into details because it really doesn't matter and it's a sore spot anyway, but he has to work the entire month of June and a lot of July. The only time we could be guaranteed to get a vacation was right after school let out. This happened to be during our anniversary so that was a definite win.

We decided somewhere along the second or third week of May to make a run for it and plan a spur of the moment vacation. Personally, the beach was calling my name. I hadn't had my feet in the sand and surf since before our daughter was born, and my soul was aching. Therefore, we tried to find a beach. My go-to place is Sanibel Island, Florida. LOVE IT!! But....it's a loooooooooooooooong drive. We needed something closer. We reached out for advice and found a new place to try. Port St. Joe, Florida. Never heard of it before, but we were going. We found a nice house to rent, bought all kinds of supplies, packed and watched the weather. Tropical Storm Alberto was headed STRAIGHT for our vacation destination. Now, I won't mention any names, but a certain weather channel on tv made it sound like the apocalypse. The end was near and our vacation wasn't going to happen. The night before we were supposed to leave it sounded bleak. Evacuations, flooding, torrential wind and rain. To top it off...we couldn't get our deposit back. I cried. I wept. I NEEDED this vacation!!! I am a stay-at-home mom with a small baking business, a farm, a large garden, corn (see previous post) and an ag teacher husband who I try to assist. I NEEDED THIS VACATION! My husband was calm. "We're going," he said. "Yeah, right," I said. "We're going to go down there and die in a storm being stupid." Yes, I said it. Melodramatic you say? No! I'm telling you that weather station made it sound like the coast was going to break off from the edge of the state and be swallowed up by the Gulf and everyone was going to die! Anyway, I emailed the manager of the house we were renting to ask about the weather, and we went to bed.

The next morning I received this reply: "This is just some wind and rain. Come on down!" I'm sorry, that channel with the weather says your part of Florida is toast. This is confusing. Then, in a stroke of shear genius, I called the Emergency Operations Office for the county. Brilliant. I spoke with the nicest lady and told her my story. She said she understood what the reports were and told me what she was seeing with her own eyes. The main problem she saw us having was the drive down. We would have to drive through very heavy rain in Alabama, and that might be dangerous. Other than that, there were some rip tides so red flags were up at the beach, but that was it. Feeling much, much better, we loaded up the kids and started off. That is right after Jeremy read the scripture about Jesus calming the storm and praying for our safety. :)

As it turns out, the lady was right, we did have to drive through rain to get there. After that, it was beautiful for our vacation. Not too hot and it only lightly rained a couple of afternoons. This place was the eye of my storm. The town itself was perfect for us. It's very low key and relaxing, filled with small, locally owned businesses and very friendly people just trying to enjoy the beach. God knew what we needed, and He delivered it. We had overloaded ourselves, got busy and needed some quiet time with the God of the universe. This is what we received at the beach. We played with the kids, admired the beauty of creation, enjoyed meeting new people and saw God's hand in all of it.

We all seem to get caught up in this race called life. In fact, we compete with each other to win the prize of "Busiest Life." I can't tell you how many times I have been in conversations or overheard people trying to one up each other by proving their life is more busy than someone else's. Really? That doesn't make anyone a winner. What we all need is some calm in the eye of the storm. God knows this. He created a day of rest because of this need. We have taken it and the rest of the days of the week and made them a mad scramble to accumulate more money, toys and accolades. Enough already! God is calling us all to slow down and just be still and know Him. Let Him lead you to the eye of the storm where you can hear His voice calling your name.