What overwhelms you today?

We know God wants us to hang on to hope, but truth is, some days we feel we’re hanging on by a thread. Can you relate?

Recently my hubby suffered from a severe back injury. Self-employed means you write yourself a paycheck, which doesn’t happen when you’re not working. Yet that seemed minor to me compared to the pain he endured and continues to struggle through.

It reminds me of a hurricane, and we’ve had many in Florida. The storm brews, then gains strength as it swirls through the tropics.

Then it hits.

You prepare, you stock up, buying water by the gallon. You purchase non-perishable food items in anticipation of the power being out for days.

Yet you can only hope you’ve prepared enough, and you don’t really know the power of the thing, until it actually hits.

When you’re in the middle of the storm, the focus is getting through it. After it passes through, you deal with the aftermath.

The storm travels on a path, and it’s a path of destruction. It can take weeks to recover, perhaps even months or years.

Feeling overwhelmed, you sort through what’s salvageable. Exhausted and discouraged, you traipse through downed trees and gardens gone by the wayside or worse.

Such as life when we experience injury, illness, financial woes, a death of a friend or loved one…

But we don’t have to hang on by a thread, because we can hang on to hope. Christ in us, the hope of glory.

The storms of weather and the storms of life are no surprise to God. He doesn’t need the Weather Channel, and He doesn’t need a doctor’s diagnosis, and He doesn’t need our two cents to know what’s coming down the path.

Storms may have paths of destruction, but children of God, we don’t.

When we begin to feel the overwhelm rise up, that Carrie Underwood song Jesus Take the Wheel might come to mind.

When did we gain control of that wheel?

Maybe if we didn’t take the wheel back so often, we wouldn’t need to deal with half the overwhelming as we do now.

Trying to work through overwhelming on our own, is like boarding a plane with toddlers in the cockpit. Who is piloting our life?

When the overwhelming, unexpected, unimaginable happens, we have a choice.

We can allow the overwhelming to drop our life like a rock, or we can ask God to lead us to the rock that is higher.

Let’s surrender our messy overwhelming, and accept the perfect overwhelming love of Jesus.

Who’s ready to allow God to take what overwhelms us?

Linking up over at Arabah Joy, so follow me over to the Grace & Truth link-up and be blessed!