(Click this video if you'd like me to read you the blog)
Sometimes the storms are outside. Raging at the window panes. Sometimes they are inside me, my heart squeezing so tight I wonder if it is a heart attack. I have learned to hate my own panic. To hate feeling ravaged by my own emotional reactions. I have learnt as an adult to crush those feelings. To trap and mute them. But still they rage, underground.
Recently I have learnt to let them out. But how to deal with a life full of these big feelings? My raging anger. My pounding fear. How do I learn to embrace the feelings that I feel might overwhelm and destroy me?
How can I weather the storm inside?
The Storm chaser
The storm has been chasing them across the waves for hours: ravenous and furious. It’s wings darken the sky and beat them off course.
The girl in the boat holds bravely to her sail as the salt sea covers her face over and over in icy spray. She gasps at each slap. Her eyes narrow as she squints through the mist and over the towering waves. Can she still see land? She must not give up. They can still make it. Just hold on, she tells herself. Just sail towards land.
She turns to look beside her where Jesus is leaning back into the wind, his hair whipping wildly in his face. Is he smiling at her? Why is he smiling? What is there to smile about right now? As they are carried away by the merciless sea, the storm ready to engulf their woefully inadequate boat. There is nothing to smile about.
Another wave crashes over the side and the little boat lurches violently. The mast is leaning away on ever wilder angles. She cannot hold it. She cannot keep the sail up. Another wave collapses. Cold and heavy over their backs. The rope jolts from her stiffened fingers. She grabs it and it cuts, deep into her palms. But she is holding on. Just.
The waves are huge now. The smudge of land is erased by the rolling mountains of the sea. Her thoughts are tossed with the boat. Where is land? Are we still going the right way? A tight band encircles her chest as the awful thought hits her. We are lost. We are lost. We can not make it.
Another wave topples with terrific force. Her hands are empty. And she is aware that she is falling. Falling. Towards the sail, towards the inky depths, the insatiable sea. Her heart stops. Bracing itself for the silver blade of pain as she brakes the surface of the water. Bracing herself to be swallowed alive.
But even as she waits, she feels a strong, safe pull at the small of her back. She is lifted. Up...up... Dazed, her she begins to breath again, gulping in mouthfuls of salty air. Her heart hammers in her ears. She is stumped on the wooden planks, water pouring from her clothes. The storm has broken. Waves continue to throw them up and down, but the wind has dropped. And they cannot fall in now. They cannot loose their footing. Because the boat is upside down. The boat is upside down. It’s mast is in the water and they are sitting a top it, the girl and Jesus. Arms round her. She will not fall. And though the land is lost in the distance, they gaze into the horizon, where light is appearing under a bank of grey cloud. Her heart slows. And leaning back into those safe arms, his jacket folding under her soaking hair, she asks him her question.
“Why were you smiling? Why were you smiling in the storm? It wasn’t exactly a good time.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” he says gently.
“Wrong?” she splutters. “How was it good? Our boat is upside down. We are completely lost. There’s no land in sight. We’ll never make it now.”
“Make it where?”
“To land of course. We’ll never make it.”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s where I am trying to get to.”
She frowns. “Not where you are trying to get to?”
“Not really no. I was trying to get to you.”
“Oh.” She looks down at the water, lapping at their feet.
“It is good to be here with you. I’m glad I came. I gave everything to be here with you. Storm or no.”
The girl feels her chest relax. The breath-stealing band loosens. She sighs. It is good.
“Better to be here with you than anywhere else,” she agrees.
The twilight fades to sapphire and indigo and they watch the clouds unfold to reveal the sky of endless lights. And there they remain. Watching for the dawn.
Life itself is not always good. But the fact of being alive...surely that is always a gift.
The joy of one more day. A day with tears streaming down my face as I weep into the washing up. A day full of my stumbling imperfections and easily angered weakness as I loose my cool over and over. A day like today, full of gazing through dreary skies and drizzle, longing for spring.
But it is also a day to be known. Known completely and ferociously loved.
A day to adventure into the further, untraceable reaches; the boundless depths of who he is; the inexhaustible spaces of grace and hope. The limitless, endless lights...
Weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30: 5
Katy x
(c) Words, recordings and images, Katy Durdant-Hollamby 2021.