FAITH

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about what having FAITH means to me. With my father going into surgery next Monday, I’ve been trying to strengthen my faith. In searching for it on a very rainy day, I was brought back to last August when I went on a market trip to Ohio to visit my stations and learned a wonderful lesson about Faith.

It was a wonderful time of traveling some place new and meeting good people! It was 530AM and I had to drive from Cleveland to Dayton in my little rental car, in the mercy of Aunt Jemima (that’s what I named my navigation system). It was an especially foggy morning and I could barely see the road ahead, but I plugged away out of Cleveland and into the un-treaded territory. It was a nice drive until I got 40 minutes away from my destination, unexpectedly the sky literally got dark in a matter of seconds and the most torrential down pour started to hit my windshield. I stiffened every muscle in my body and a wave of panic washed over me. I could not see anything but my wipers going the maximum speed. My hands were moistened as I griped the wheel and I just keep praying for my faith to be restored and to not have this fear of not knowing where I was and being caught in a terrible storm. I turned the radio to get a bit of a distraction and all I got was static, frantically I pushed the scan button to get a better station… nothing ,static. Finally a station with clarity was on and they were singing a song about nothing other than, FAITH! I felt a sudden wave of relief, suddenly I felt a bit stronger. About a minute after I got stronger, I started sweating of nervousness again due to the fact that I could not see anything on the road. I had no idea if I was on track or if I was going to drive off the road. Panic was settled in ,nicely buckled in the passenger’s seat. About a dozen prayers later, a Wonder Bread Semi merged right in front of me! I thought, “Oh Thank God”, I can now follow Him and I’ll be fine, I put all my focus on the wonder of it all, and just stared straight ahead at the red hearts on the back of the semi. I got stronger! I had a little more FAITH that I was going to be alright. I keep praying for the storm to be over , over and over , and over again but my prayers were going unanswered. .. it wasn’t over BUT I knew I must have been praying for the wrong thing because I had faith my prayers would be answered if they were the right ones.

Now that I had a guide through the storm I started thinking what it meant for me to have FAITH. I realized that the “storm” I was going through was similar to when things are going wrong in life. You can’t stop the storm, you have to have FAITH that you will get through it! I was praying for the storm to stop, when I should have been praying for the FAITH to get through it all! Once I realized that, I quit praying for the storm to stop and I thanked God for my FAITH. I kid you not the minute I did that (the following is not writers embellishment, I promise), the storm stopped and it was like out of a movie. the clouds parted and it became the most beautiful day! I could not believe that all I had to do was pray for my FAITH to become greater than my fear. We are all faced with different circumstances in life that are scary. But when we stop to think that we have the ability to exercise our faith in those times to get stronger and stronger, and know we're not in it alone, it provides a peace unlike anything else. And as more and more “storms” come your way you can withstand a lot more. I hope that if you are going through a storm in your life, that you take a moment to thank God for it and let Him bring you closer to Him. Let Him show you the promise of Heaven. This is not our world.

Know that you are taken care of and that when you have God, you don’t need anything else.