God in the Storm (4/23)

Dear friends,

            Janelle again. Thank you for allowing me to share this journey with you. E-mail really is my therapy right now and hearing from all of you lifts my spirits and encourages my heart. I just feel the need to write about what is happening. So, thank you for your patience, beautiful responses, encouraging prayers and scripture verses. They are keeping me strong and joyful.

            I just felt I needed to share a cool thing that has happened during the last couple of days. I have a dear friend who I  have known for many years who I refer to as Cynthia, the prayer warrior. She has always had an amazingly sensitive heart to God asking her to pray. I witnessed this first hand with Jakob. She would call because she felt the need to pray for us and, amazingly, she always did so on days when the news was not looking good. She was one of the first people we notified when we received the news of this next battle.

            She sent me a beautiful letter telling me that the night before surgery she was awakened in the night by a storm. She had been praying for me, but felt God specifically asking her to pray in the night. As she was praying, the song “Praise You In This Storm” by Casting Crowns came to her and she felt a tug to send me a CD. The next day, at the exact time my surgery was supposed to start, a storm hit, it gave her chills as it did me when I read her letter and she made sure to send me the CD. It is a beautiful song and it encourages my heart.

            Well, last night was a particularly hard and tearful night for me. I try to trust God and not fear, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed when all of the what ifs come. So, I e-mailed some friends and talked to my family and asked specifically for prayers to guard my heart and mind from fear, scary thoughts, the doubts that satan would place there.  Just as I was coming back to bed, the lightning started and the thunder rolled and a powerful storm came. Jakob started crying and Willem brought him into bed with us and we held and soothed him through the storm. Tears came to my eyes when I realized that this is just how God is holding me in this storm that I am facing. I felt that this was specifically timed to reassure me in a powerful way of the presence of God. It calmed my heart and I finally fell into a peaceful sleep. He is good and He has not forsaken me.

            Other songs that have been very comforting are “Word of God Speak” by Mercy Me and “Held” by Natalie Grant. A book that I highly recommend is “Holding on to Hope” by Nancy Guthrie, which is a beautiful illustration of a woman holding onto her faith in the midst of some incredible suffering, and not just once, but twice in her life.  I read the book when I was pregnant for Jakob and it was absolutely inspirational. Thank you Ann Luttrell for bringing it to me. So, any of you who are experiencing your own storms, those are my recommendations. Thank you all for your continued prayers.

                                                Held in His Loving Arms,

                                                            Janelle