Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region

This past month, I’ve had the hardest time writing a single word because we’ve been in the limbo of packing and waiting for a move. Boxes stack to the ceiling and our closing date keeps moving, and we aren’t sure what’s happening. It’s disorienting, and the only way I know how to describe it is that it feels a lot like willingly stepping into flood waters. Everything is swirling. I’m not sure which way is up. I tried to orient by organizing and throwing things away.

I tried to orient with a yard sale, by making room. There a woman tried to get a better deal on a pretty pillow, but I clung to it, trying to keep my head above water. Finally I let it all go. None of it kept me straight. In this flood, the yard sale whirled by.

We’re getting another living area in our new house, and so to keep afloat, I’ve loaded cart after cart with beautiful rugs. I’m going to pick my favorite. I think it’ll be so grand. I close my eyes at night and see patterned kilim and cotton dhurrie. I cling to one. It’s going to be okay. Everything will so pretty, but then the rug sells out. Silly me. The flood has grown into a raging river, and I don’t know how I’m breathing in it. The shoreline’s a blur. The rug is gone.

It’s my children, too. I reach for them to keep me up. On the last day of preschool, my third-born sang, and my heart raced. I wanted to stand and say “No, no, no. Slow this down.” I’m reaching my hands out to grab on, but it’s too fast. The kindergartener only a few days later sang, “I am a promise. I am a possibility.” A great big yellow construction-paper sun beamed behind him and the rest of the class. I took photos of him and his best friend, all the promise in the world. I wanted to rip the sun down and fold it in my pocket, put it in a file. Before my oldest ran his first 5k, I held his face. He was just a baby. Now he runs toward a finish line.

There’s no time or space for friends. I hardly get it together for my family. Surely it’s a phase. I’m alone in the waters.

And then at church, we are singing, and I think I’ve inhaled the waters. I think I’ve gone under, and it’s getting pitch black, but then my feet hit hard, and I’m lifted up. It’s a root, a great big root, and I’m at the base of a tree, and I’m lifted. We’re singing praises. We’re thanking Jesus, and I see that I’m grafted. I can see it two ways. One way is temporary, and the other is eternal.

I see the whole rushing chaotic thing below me, how there is no other real way to keep above the slipping world than to open the eyes of my heart, not when a woman has four sons like me. Not when she has a past that threatens to swallow or a future that she can’t control. I don’t understand much right now. But I know this.

The only way to keep afloat is to cling to Jesus. He’s not moving anywhere. He’s established. The world will change in the blink of an eye, but Jesus Christ is the same. He was with me just yesterday. He’s holding me up today, and tomorrow He’s going to make sure I’m where I’m supposed to be.

Have you ever felt yourself overwhelmed by the flood when everything changes? How do your orient yourself?

By Amber at The Runamuck

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