Weathering the Storms – Day 1

I was driving to an errand one day when a storm suddenly dumped water out of the sky. I couldn’t see out the car windows. The streets flooded. I had to pull my car to the side of the road. I was scared. I sat there and prayed for more than an hour. Finally, I noticed the sun peeking through the clouds.

Metaphorical storms hit our lives as well. Our job may be threatened. Financial emergencies may arise. Our car may break down.

A run of personal happiness may be interrupted by an attack of self-contempt or despair.

Sometimes the storms feel personal. If a friend betrays us, lies to us, or manipulates us, we feel attacked. But it may be that our friend is in a downward spiral and getting hit by a different storm—his or her behaviors don’t have that much to do with us.

A situation at work can feel personal, especially when it jeopardizes our income or job. But the shift may have to do with management, corporate budgets, or something that has little to do with us. We didn’t cause it, and whatever is happening is not a consequence of what we did.

The storm has as little to do with us as does a hailstorm that appears in the sky. Everything happens for a reason. But the reason for some of these storms may have nothing to do with us.

When personal storms occur, it’s time to pull our car to the side of the road and figure out what we need to do to protect ourselves.

In the middle of these storms, we don’t necessarily need to understand the lesson we should be learning. Rather, we need to calmly give ourselves over to a survival mode and commit to weathering the storm.

Value: Developing confidence in our ability to weather storms is the value this week.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact