A Churning Sea

I am always entertained with stories about people seeing “signs” in their lives and listening to how they interpret them. Sometimes I think that things aren’t really signs at all, but a person’s desperate grasp at whatever they need at that moment, whether it be encouragement, a justification for doing (or not doing something), or simply a little reminder. I’m reminded of the movie Serendipity with Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack. I know you ladies out there know what I’m talkin’ about! She believes in fate and lives her life looking for signs. It’s a cheesy, romantic, often frustrating movie, but in the end, it’s mushy and heart-warming – fate brings them together.

I’m not talking about fate here, nor am I talking about a love story with a happy ending. But what I do want to share with you is a little story about signs. Little hopes of encouragement. Little reminders. And not from the universe, but from God.

I’m assuming that if you’re reading this blog post, then you likely read my recent Restless post. If not, welcome to my blog and you can find the Restless post just a bit further down the page. I’m still struggling with the things that I mentioned in that post, and I’m still not in sync with God, but I’m getting there, and He is slowly working on me.

I was working in the Cayman Islands last week. The location doesn’t really matter other than that it was an island and was surrounded by the Caribbean Sea. Work was going just fine, I had a good team to work with, the food was tasty – I mean, what more could you ask for? I’m living in my own little world down there, staring out of a conference room window at the Caribbean all day, and thinking that there could be worse places to be working. I was feeling relatively happy and wasn’t really angry at God, but wasn’t buddy-buddy with Him either. Just kind of cruising along and minding my own business.

Then it happened. Or rather, they happened. Signs. Reminders. Little hints of encouragement. God.

As the week progressed, I began paying more attention to the water. It was getting a lot more agitated. There was no more calm, clear, turquoise gorgeousness. It was heaving and hurling and churning.

A churning sea - Sign #1.

I’m riding in the taxi van with my two other team members on the way from work to the hotel, same as I had every other morning and evening. Uneventful. And I happen to notice that the taxi driver had a bumper sticker on her glove compartment that said “Act Justly. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.”

Bumper sticker - Sign #2.

A couple of minutes later, I happen to look at her driver’s seat and notice that she has a t-shirt pulled over the seat, and it’s one of those Senor Frog’s t-shirts (which sounds silly in this story), that very clearly stated on the back “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.”

Random bar t-shirt - Sign #3. At this point, I just have to smile.

In continuing with the nightly routine, we all went upstairs to our rooms for about an hour before meeting up for dinner. I had brought my daily devotional book (My Utmost for His Highest) with me, but hadn’t turned a page yet. Remember, I’m just happily cruising along, minding my own business. Then I decide to have a look at the devotion for that day. And it said this: “You have no idea of where or how God is going to engineer your future circumstances, and no knowledge of what stress and strain is going to be placed in you either at home or abroad. And if you waste your time in over activity, instead of being immersed in the great fundamental truths of God’s redemption, then you will snap when the stress and strain do come.”

Daily devotion - Sign #4.

Fate was not at work here. And I’m not going to pretend that my life turned upside down because of what I have labeled as the “four signs.” But for me, in those moments, on that one day, God knew that I needed something to grasp on to. He knew that I wasn’t having conversations with Him, and He was finding ways to have conversations with me anyway.

Micah 6:8 is one of my favorite verses. That it was stuck to a glove compartment in a taxi van on Grand Cayman Island could have just been coincidence, and very likely was. But it made me smile. The t-shirt from a bar with the statement about “finding your prince” was likely just a souvenir gift from someone to the taxi driver. But it reminded me to be patient. That the sea grew wilder with each day was, in all honesty, a result of the tropical depression that was in the Western Caribbean. I know that. But it reminded me that life is lived out in cycles. That one day it can be smooth and calm and beautiful, and in the next instant, it can be a churning sea, tossing everything around and rearranging what used to be your normal, and making it into something new.

And that devotion? It’s funny how words can speak so powerfully to you one day and be mere words on the next. That day, those words encouraged me to just hang on. To not stop believing in the might and power of our God. And to not let myself get caught up in a routine, or in my current status in life, but to get caught up in Him.

I don’t believe in fate, I believe in God. Some people would say that what God plans for our lives IS fate. But the problem with that is that we have the choice to screw it all up with the decisions that we make. So in the meantime, I will keep on trudging along, trying harder to keep myself focused on Him and not on everything around me. And by doing this I can hopefully be better prepared to handle the stress and strain that is sure to come and toss my life around, just like a churning sea.