"Fear not, for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties; yes, I will help you!  Yes, I will hold you up and retain you with my right hand of rightness and justice."  Isaiah 41:10

These are the words the Lord gently reminded me of the Sunday morning shortly before Hurricane Irma made landfall on the west coast of FL.  Having evacuated to Alabama Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m. with two cars full of little ones (because we were in the direct path of this Category 4 Hurricane), it seemed I was having a bit of a teary "Jacob" struggle (Genesis 32:24) with God that morning.  I was not only stressed over the safety of so many but also struggling to be at peace with whatever havoc Irma would wreak that day.  Before we had left that Saturday morning, I had bagged pictures and journals and put them in tubs for protection and then decided that my Bible with all the dated notes in the margins - records of His faithfulness - was definitely going with, along with all important documents.  When family asked if there was anything else that it would really be hard to have destroyed, believe it or not, I said, "my floor."  Go ahead and laugh if you want at the idea of trying to pack a floor on top of the minivan...... but I could hardly handle the thought of my floor being destroyed for the third time in a few years, along with all the mess and expense.  I kept thinking about those 9 windows and 8 French doors still uncovered, with hundreds of huge oak trees and 200 ft. tall pines on the property.  The wild thing was, this was the same verse that the Lord brought to me the first time I had to jackhammer out the floor.  And it was 11 months after this first tear out that the Lord began to really teach me how He would "harden me to difficulties" (as I realized that the next floor would also have to be torn out, in addition to dealing with a ton of other seemingly nasty situations).     

The second verse the Lord took me to that Sunday morning was Psalm 84:  "Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.  Passing through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs....They go from strength to strength....".  I assumed the Lord was telling me there would be a time of weeping, but that I needed to come out of it praising the Lord, pulling my strength from Him.  And the praising needed to start right then, that Sunday morning.

Sitting there in Alabama watching pictures on the news of what Irma was doing along the coast with the storm surge gave an unbelievable visual for Exodus 14:21-31, where God stretched out His hand and pulled the Red Sea back for the Israelites to cross on dry ground and then let it come crashing back to drown the Egyptians in a mad deluge of fury.  What awesome, unbelievable power our God has - and how tiny our understanding of the true reality of that power! 

Heading home Monday afternoon (without mothers and children, who had to fly back later), we saw the power of Irma unleashed.  I held onto Isaiah 41:10 and Psalm 84 as we fought the wind trying to skirt Irma's current path while in AL and then traversed FL back roads to avoid flooded, closed, and backed up interstate - while keeping an eagle eye out for downed trees across the road and flooded roadways.  It was weird going through towns and cities that were completely dark, having a group of around 100 policemen pass us at one time, and going by station after station with no gas......almost like we were walking through the pages of Revelation.  Usually when we did see an open station, it was guarded by policemen, with no access to the typical motorist.

I arrived home Tuesday morning at 3:00 a.m. to no worse than downed fences (thankfully!!) and tree branches covering the ground like a carpet, with power, postal service, and perishable supplies not available until a few days later.  This time, my "Valley of Weeping" had been mostly in the mountain of "What If?"  Others, however, had a much bigger, ongoing "valley of weeping", both in FL and Texas.  Maybe you are one of those.  Or maybe you are just beginning to deal with a new TBI or some other kind of extreme stress. 

As the world spins down further and further and weather continues to escalate, we will possibly all find ourselves in some additional terrifying situations - until that day the Lord calls His own up to Him, away from the trauma.  Two things.....  

(1) Like God commanded the Israelites, we need to constantly remember what God's faithfulness has been to us in the past.  For Steven and I, the most memorable time would be the song of His faithfulness throughout the dark night of 18 years of severe TBI (so incomparably harder than "floor" problems).  I'm sure you all have your own dark nights of His faithfulness stored in memory boxes that need to be kept open. 

And (2), Scriptures like Isaiah 41:10 and Psalm 84 need to be written on our hearts, bringing assurance in times ahead that no matter what the future brings, God will be with us, He will actually use what we are going through to strengthen us and draw us closer to Him, and He will bring us into a "place of springs" - where we can praise Him in the midst of it all.

Lord, prepare us for whatever each of our futures hold.  Teach us, one by one, to draw our strength from You and to continue to praise You, no matter our circumstances.