I was mad on this hike.
While I was grateful for the deeper-level healing and revelation God had brought over the past couple years, we were wrestling, yet again, with a burden that would not leave me.
Minutes later, I notice the sky changing. A monsoon began rolling through on the horizon at sunset and I thought, “Right on time, God.”
There was already a storm stirring in my soul, so it felt like His personal invitation to pour it all out.
Lightning was striking, while I was crying out to Him:
“Why won’t you release me, bring clarity, and provide peace on this?”
I was desperate to understand why this burden, this ghost of my past, wouldn’t leave me. I was exhausted and I felt abandoned.
While storms can stir up feelings of judgement, more often than not, they’re stirring up God’s plan for healing and restoration.
Through the lightning strikes and my whirlwind of emotions, I still held onto the truth that He saw me, He was not rejecting me, and His grace was sufficient to carry me through these deeper roots of healing that would ultimately bring clarity.
Genesis 16:13; Psalm 9:10; 2 Corinthians 12:9; 1 Peter 1:6-7
Storms of blessing and storms of hardship—they all count.
To understand how I arrived at this storm in Santa Fe, I need to explain the storm in Oregon.
When I arrived in Oregon with a fresh start and a new blueprint for rebuilding my life, a different kind of storm hit me. An unfamiliar kind— a storm of blessing.
Before I even had a chance to fully unpack, God was already aligning me with people, places, and opportunities that reflected prayers I had carried for decades.
For the first time in my life, I felt seen and understood. Not on a surface level, but on a hidden level.
Conversation after conversation, someone would offer a story, a gift, an opportunity, or a piece of encouragement that felt custom-tailored to this restorative path God was leading me down.
Each moment felt like a key unlocking treasures that had been buried deep within my soul.
But instead of fully receiving these blessings and stepping into the community God was placing around me, I took a page from Jonah’s book.
I ran. I went to Santa Fe and told everyone I would be back.
And instead of returning to Oregon afterward, as I had originally planned, I ran all the way back to my hometown.
As I was sitting in Sunday School class recently, and the teacher pulled up a map as he was teaching Jonah’s story (right on time, God.), I didn’t think it was a coincidence that the distance Jonah ran was strikingly similar to the distance I ran from my original commission back to my hometown.
Arriving in late November, I was thoroughly convinced I was here to plant roots. The past season out west, I reasoned, was simply a time for healing, exploring, and reconnecting with my authenticity.
Meanwhile, God was still orchestrating His blueprint, while I was slowly beginning to realize I had pulled another Jonah.
While there had been a storm of blessing in Oregon, the storms in Santa Fe and back home felt like a different kind.
There was an uneasiness in my soul I couldn’t shake. While I smiled and told everyone it felt good to be home and, in some ways it really did, something kept stirring beneath the surface.
As God was pointing me back to Oregon, I explained it away. Surely this was my desire, not His. I’m romanticizing the past—Oregon wasn’t without its challenges.
To double down on my commitment to rooting in my hometown, I even bought a home.
Yet the uneasiness remained, particularly as opportunities were not feeling aligned and it felt like more doors were shutting than opening. I felt stuck, caught in a holding pattern.
As a couple opportunities circled back around from Oregon, and they were aligned with the vision God gave me, it was becoming increasingly clear that this season in my hometown wasn’t about rooting.
It was about grieving. It was about letting go of the hope I had attached to a future in my hometown that was no longer unfolding the way I expected.
It was then that God illuminated a new passage in Hebrews 11 to provide clarity—
“If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return.”
Hebrews 11:15 CSB
This season was my opportunity to return— to grieve, to release my plans, and to let go of what I thought my future was supposed to look like so I could step back into the original commission He had given me.
Learning how to receive love after storms of trauma.
Looking back, I realized the storm wasn’t ultimately about Oregon, Santa Fe, my hometown or even the vision God had given me.
Beneath all of it, He was exposing a deeper wound:
My inability to receive the very love, belonging, and care I had spent years praying for.
It wasn’t until I was sitting in my ancestral church listening to a sermon that God connected the final dots.
The preacher was teaching about the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.
This was the same story God had used to speak to me, as I had emotional bleeding from deeper-rooted cycles of trauma that occurred for decades.
In the weeks leading up to this sermon, I kept encountering this scripture again:
‘And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”’
Mark 5:34 NLT
I knew He was trying to show me fresh revelation. I just didn’t understand what.
As the preacher shared the deeper context around the word “sickness” and how the body can sometimes reject something beneficial when it is ill, my tears started flowing.
Not out of sadness, but out of relief as He was connecting the final dots.
While I sat in the church pew with tears flowing, God brought me back to a moment in Oregon. The week before I left for Santa Fe.
I was connecting with a friend at an art gallery event. As we talked, she shared another layer of her story—one that deeply encouraged me to continue following where God was leading.
As the evening was ending, she pulled me into a deeper embrace and gave me the longest hug I had ever received.
Long enough for me to realize I wasn’t breathing.
She was offering genuine care, connection, and love. Yet instead of receiving it, I noticed my body appeared to be bracing itself for trauma.
That night, back in my tiny home along the river, I asked God:
“What was that? Why was I so braced?”
I then snapped back to the sermon I was listening to.
The preacher made me realize my heart was rejecting the love that was beneficial because of the memory of my past illness.
While God had healed my heart, my body was still perceiving love as a threat.
Because the relationships of my past often included conditional love , unhealthy patterns, and deeper-rooted betrayals.
In that service, I suddenly realized this lesson wasn’t about simply believing God could heal me and my suffering was over. After all, I had already touched His hem and knew He did.
This next layer was about trusting Him enough to believe those old patterns had truly been broken.
I could open my heart again to receive the love He was providing through other people. It was allowing His love and provision to reach places in my heart I had spent years protecting out of survival.
This doesn’t mean I’ll never navigate betrayal or hardship again.
It simply means, I’m better equipped to set boundaries to prevent harmful patterns from returning, and to remember He is faithful to take what the enemy meant for evil and to turn it for good, as I have seen Him do time and time again in my own life. (Genesis 50:20)
Trusting God’s sovereignty through the storm
He uses the storms to recalibrate our hearts away from patterns of pride and shame that often keep us stuck, to ground us in a center point of humility, where we can rest in His sovereignty to flow forward.
The storms strengthen our ability to trust God’s leading even when it goes against the grain of the world around us.
Even when we take a different route than the one God originally showed us, we can remain bold and confident.
He is sovereign over the reroute. He doesn’t waste the experience, and He has already gone ahead of us to make a way back.
This past year has given me a deeper comfort in God’s omnipresence—
He holds authority over our past, our present, and our future because He already finished the story we’re still actively navigating (Psalm 139), and He is faithful to finish the good work He started within each of us (Philippians 1:6).
While past patterns of pride and shame were whispering:
“You might as well give up. You failed. You’ll look like an idiot if you go back out there and fail again. Are you sure you’re hearing His voice correctly?”
Humility was whispering:
“Try again. This time, a bit wiser, a bit more resilient, and a bit more faithful.
And if it still doesn’t work out, I’ll know it still holds a purpose, even when it feels like I’m stuck in the dot over the ‘i’ in “Jeremy Bearimy” from “The Good Place.” iykyk😉
So when the next storm blows through my life or yours, my prayer is that we stand firm with a dependence and trust that God holds the authority over that storm, and He is faithful to use it for our good, and for His glory.
Devotional prompt:
What storms are you currently navigating? How can some of these lessons shift how you navigate through them?
