I Will Praise You in This Storm

I have gone back and forth for the last few days, trying to decide whether or not I would share this story on the blog. It has been almost 2 years, since our lives have become an open book, and we called on our friends, family, and blog readers to become prayer warriors with us.

Yes, from time to time I relish the thought of "privacy", but then God reminds me that each of us have been given a testimony, if you will, and if we don't use it to minister to others we are hindering God's power. I guess you could look at it like the Parable of the talents, and what will you do with God's gift?

For those of you that have been faithfully reading the blog for a while now, know that if you leave the page loaded long enough, you will here Casting Crown's song: Praise You in this Storm. That is just one of several songs that hold special meaning to our family. In our house we refer to the songs on the blog as "Todd's songs". I don't listen to them often any more, for several reasons...

Last week, I was putting a few things away in the closet, in the Baby Todd's room. Which, has now been transformed to the new Baby Sister's room. However, most of Baby Todd's things are packed in the closet, including the bags of cards and gifts we brought home from DuPont. They haven't been touched or sorted through yet, just put in the closet for now. Anyway, I was putting some things away in the closet just like I've done hundreds of times before. Only for some reason, this time was different. As I'm sitting there, I suddenly heard the song Praise You in this Storm start playing. I had no idea where it was coming from. After some delay I realized it was coming from one of the "DuPont Bags", and I instantly started digging, and crying. The faster I dug for whatever was playing this music, the faster the tears flowed. It was now to the point that I could no longer see what I was digging for. I just had to stop that music. Finally, I gave up and said "okay God, you have my attention..."

A musical card, in one of the bags, turned out to be the culprit. Still not sure what made it start to play music, I never touched the bag at all.

I shared what had happened with Dustin, but neither of us really said much about the experience. Later that night, as I lay in bed (unable to sleep, as usual), I began to pray about it. I really wanted to know what God was trying say, no matter how painful it might be. The one thing I kept hearing Him say over and over again was,

"Your storm isn't over...so, why did you stop praising Me?"

Yikes, did I hear that clearly? Yes, I did. Loud and clear, several times. What I realized at that moment is, that storms come and go. Some take a while to pass and others move in and out quickly and very unexpectedly. The same is true with our spiritual storms as well. I have no idea what my storm is right now, and I have no idea where God is taking me next. But what I do know is that storm I'm facing or about to face, won't seem so big while I'm praising God!

From the very beginning, when we asked you all to become prayer warriors with us, we began praying for you too. We don't know who you are, or what your storms are, but we pray for you. My prayer for you (our blog readers) now, is that no matter what storm you are weathering at the moment, you will be able to find a way to continue to praise Him!