Into the Storm

Slowly my items have been coming in. My bullet proof vest for my security officer job was just delivered today 2/17, at 2:17pm. I'm not sure if that has any meaning.

I decided I need to refocus and secure my job. Though I was feeling sick, I still took my father to shop for a firearm. First stop was the first deal. Around 5:30–6ish. So now it's waiting until the 21st to pick up.

I feel better securing my paycheck with my company. Being able to pay bills and take care of priorities, including my father, matters.

I left a message for my counselor who helped me in another chapter of my life that I mention in Operating Without a Manual, to arrange a meeting. I know I can't do this alone, even with all that I've learned and all the tools I have.

Of course prayer and connecting with God helps. I even made the realization that God is a solid answer to get through this. I keep thrashing when it's unnecessary. It's still hard. When I'm in it, I'm in it.

I have been planning to take some time out and escape the world with camping. I seriously need to heal.

I've been disassociating lately. It's been making me sick. Physically sick, nauseous. I don't feel here. Drifting.

I’ve learned something about myself. I hold everything in while I’m moving.

When I’m working, building, surviving, producing, there isn’t space to feel. There’s only space to execute. So I compress it. I stack it neatly somewhere inside and keep going.

And then one day I stop. Everything I postponed hits at once. When I finally get a moment, everything comes out.

And it hurts. Not because I’m fragile. Because it was postponed.

Life can feel like that. A storm I don’t have time to acknowledge while I’m inside it.

The wind is loud. Vision is narrow. The rain feels constant. I move forward because I have to. I endure because stopping isn’t an option.

When I’m inside the storm, it feels total. It feels permanent. It feels like this is all there is.

But that’s perception, not reality.

Above the storm, the sky is always blue. Always.

Clouds have limits. They move in and they move out. They form and they dissolve. The sky does not.

God is that sky. Unmoved. Unaffected. Unthreatened. Constant.

While I’m bracing against the wind, He isn’t reacting. While I feel surrounded, He isn’t contained. The storm may be loud to me, but it is not sovereign over Him. And that changes how I forgive.

If God holds the highest position, then everything else has to be repositioned — including the people inside the storm.

Forgiveness becomes different when I understand this. Forgiveness is not pretending the storm didn’t hit. It’s recognizing it doesn’t define the sky.

Some people truly do not know what they do. Some operate from trauma. Some from ego. Some from ignorance. Some from pain that spills outward and wounds everyone near it. And some know exactly what they’re doing.

Either way, if I give my attention and focus to them, I end up living in reaction. When I center the offense, I remain offended. When I keep replaying the wound, I stay inside it. When I treat the storm as ultimate, I begin to believe that it is.

I need to refocus. The chaos does not deserve that position. The betrayal does not deserve that position. The misunderstanding does not deserve that position. Not even myself.

I need to magnify God.

Tools are helpful. Boundaries are necessary. Emotional intelligence matters. Protecting my peace is wisdom.

But without Source, tools become idols.

I can master coping mechanisms. I can perfect restraint. I can build walls and call them strength. But if the foundation is self alone, eventually the structure strains.

God does not serve the process. He rules it.

And I understand that He uses people, places, and things as instruments. My counselor for instance. The counseling helped me. It landed right.

He provides indirectly at times. Like the story of the man waiting to be saved while a boat comes, then a helicopter, and he refuses them.

I am not the one standing at the gates asking why I wasn’t rescued. He sent what I needed.

Forgiveness does not mean access. Loving from a distance is not cruelty.

I can forgive someone and still lock the door. I can love someone and still love them from a distance. I can release someone and still remove access. I can pray for someone and still protect my peace.

Distance is not cruelty. It is containment.

Forgiveness clears the internal storm. Boundaries prevent future ones. That’s not contradiction. That’s maturity.

Sometimes I am the black sheep. Sometimes they are. Sometimes both.

The one who didn’t fit. The one blamed. The one misunderstood. The one who refused to conform to dysfunction.

And here is the truth: Jesus loves you, black sheep. Not when you get it right. Not when you return to the fold properly polished. Not when the storm clears.

Now. Storm and all.

When I finally stop moving and everything comes out — the anger, the grief, the backlog — it’s not weakness. It’s pressure release. It’s the body saying, “You’re safe enough to feel now.”

When it hurts, I remind myself that the storm has a ceiling. The sky does not.

God was constant when I couldn’t see Him. He was blue when everything looked grey. He was steady while I was bracing.

The storm is loud. But it is temporary.

The storm does not define me. The sky has always been there.