Face the Clouds

If you’ve been following along with me via social media then you know that I’ve been going through a particularly tough spot these last few months. Tough as in exhausting, emotional, surprising, difficult and all around very heavy. Leaning on my relationship with God, friends and family has been what has been pulling me through along with learning to face the clouds. Feeling the pain and not running from it. For the only way to find the lesson in all of this is to…..”…face the clouds
To find the silver lining”.

These lyrics from the song What Faith Can Do by Kutless just felt like they jumped out of the air in my mom taxi and slapped me in the face. Ever have one of those moments, where you are singing along to a song for the millionth time and somehow you hear the words for the first time? Like hear the words in a powerful time stopping way?

That is what happened to me in that moment, I heard those words “You gotta face the clouds To find the silver lining” as I was doing one of the many runs to and from the old house to the new house. Just a month prior to this in March, Trav was away on an exercise for the military and he was told that his job was being changed right there on the spot and that meant he’d have to deploy in 3 months. All of the emotions rush in at this moment, you know that it’s part of the job description but you also know you have 4 kids that are growing up so quickly and all sorts of selfish feelings arise.

It’s really not alot of time to prepare for such big news but atleast it is 3 months away and not weeks or days is what I kept telling myself.  It wasn’t just a deployment we had to face though, our lease was up in 3 months as well and when we contacted about signing another contract we were told they wanted more money since we’d be “making more” deployed. We weren’t about to stand for that gross behavior so we hit our knees. Yep, our first instinct was to pray and to pray boldly.

We knew from past hard lessons that if you call out for God’s plan that he will guide you through it. Often times we get sidetracked by all of the emotional distractions that it takes you a bit to go to him but in this case we knew we didn’t have time for that. So we prayed to be shown where he was leading us, if he meant us to move and to move quickly to show us where to go. All sorts of emotions erupted during this time, uncertainty is one of the biggest disruptors for relationships with yourself and others. I could feel myself being pulled into the doubt pool and I swear I could see my name written on invitations to the daily pity party. Instead of giving in, I chose to be a #joyseeker- check out my previous blog post for that reference, I chose to face whatever was being thrown at me and to search for the joy, the silver lining.

That doesn’t mean I was all flowers and sunshine all of the time, the pain and of all of the emotions were absolutely still there and I’m human failing daily. With all of that I chose to stand tall with the pain getting soaking wet as the storms of life poured down all around me and face those clouds looming above. Letting the tears flow, the emotions to come and prayers to cover all of it. The deployment. Having to move. All of the heaviness.

The weekend after finding out about the deployment and housing situation, I was standing in the hallway after just enjoying watching my oldest daughter perform in the musical the Little Mermaid and chatting with her boyfriend’s parents. Small talk about how tired we were of driving to the school for all the prep and practices for the amazing production. From where we lived it was almost a 30 minute drive to the high school each way, so about an hour round trip, so much time driving.

As we were chatting I made the comment that we were needing to move and it was going to have to be quick with the deployment so soon, how I sure wished I could move to the area they lived in which was less than a 15 minute drive. Our family is big so we needed a house that would fit us as well which made the search even more complicated and we wanted to stay in the same high school district. I shared with them a bit about that then our kiddos came out and we went on our way. Though the prayer just kept echoing in my mind, it sure would be nice if we could be closer to the high school.

The next morning I pulled up the Trulia App as I did every morning to search for a house that would be big enough and worked for our timeframe of being moved in before Trav left. Searching the entire high school zone for a 4bed+ house and praying for a green dot to pop up indicating that a house was available. Up until this morning, it was always flop, nothing was on the market that worked for us to rent. We had wanted our next move to be our last by buying our forever home but our home in PA hadn’t sold yet so we couldn’t buy down here, also this quick deployment meant we didn’t have enough time to either. This morning was different, those heavy emotions slightly lifted for a moment as a green dot popped up with a house that would work and it was just a few streets away from where Abby’s boyfriend lives. Exactly the prayer that had echoed in my heart the night before, prayer answered!

All of this happened so quickly with me choosing to face the clouds, to embrace the pain because I knew that it was here to teach me something. I ran from pain in a very destructive way just recently and I’ll have to share about that at some point so I knew that running wasn’t an option. That facing those clouds of emotion and pain was going to be my only way through it that would be productive and not destructive. The whole moving process was full of stress but surprisingly it was very calm and went so smoothly. God surely provided in every aspect and for every curveball thrown our way at that time.

That moment in the mom taxi when those words stopped time is so cherished, it was such a powerful moment from God to show me that I was getting this lesson right. It came in the middle of the storm during the emotion filled time of quickly moving our 3000+sq foot house with just me and our family(my SIL and MIL came to help too!) to do all of the work. It was affirming to me that the only way to find the good in the chaos that life throws your way is to keep your head up and facing those clouds. The clouds may be heavy and dark and full of all kinds of scary emotions but the quickest way to get them to move along is to face them, to see the rays of light peeking through them, the silver lining.

Sharing this with you today because maybe it could help someone out there to be reminded to choose to focus on the growth, the goodness, the joy that is waiting for you during extremely stormy times. During times where you aren’t sure you are going to be able to stand through it and are soaking wet, there are rays of light for you to find in those heavy clouds as you face them. The light is always there, you are never alone and will get stronger with each storm that you face.