Nine months. It had been nine months since Clay was moved to his interim job. And it had been nine months since I had felt as if my life was on hold.
We wanted to move into a house. We wanted to possibly start a family. And yet I felt… stuck.
I jogged down to the ocean to talk to God, and when I got there it was so windy. Like I’m talking windier than I’d seen it in all my eight years of living in Los Angeles.
And that’s when I remembered the screenwriting term I had learned: winds of change.
winds of change
Whenever there is a particular windy scene in a film, it signifies change. I felt as if God was telling me, “The winds of change are coming. They’re here. I’m just preparing it all, working behind the scenes of your story, to bring it to fruition.”
And then I looked down at my feet to find this prayer rock.
I’d gotten in the habit of taking these prayer rocks home with me and writing on them with sharpie that which I’d been praying about and the date.
I’ve watched some of them get answered–this one included.
God did not lie to me on that day. Every word He spoke was true. For He was preparing all things to come together in His timing.
Right around that time the house we would end up so quickly buying when we found out I was pregnant in October had just started being flipped. And though we lost our twin babies from that pregnancy, the very week we moved into our new home in December we found out we were pregnant once again.
These things I so badly wanted were so graciously given to me. Sure it took way longer than I would have liked, but faithful He was… and faithful He will be.
As Hillsong sings,
God of Your promise
You don’t speak in vain
No syllable empty or void
For once You have spoken
All nature and science follow the sound of Your voice.
On our wedding day, it was so windy that we used hundreds of prayer rocks to hold down menus on the tables. While I truly felt the Spirit’s presence in those winds, my human mind has since wondered, Was it just coincidence?
But as I explored what Scripture has to say about winds, I most certainly do not think it was.
the four winds
In Ezekiel 37, Ezekiel has just spoken over the valley of dry bones, and they have come together with tendons and flesh and skin, but there was no breath in them. In verse 9, God instructs–
Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath on these slain, that they come to life.'”
Ezekiel does so and breath enters them; they come to life!
I further research these “four winds” to find a correlation in Revelation–
The holding back of the four winds represents the whole theme of Revelation 7, which is a worshipful respite from the outpouring of God’s judgments. The four winds that had previously represented destruction and affliction on the earth now serve as the most moving and hope-filled promise from God for the protection of His people: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God” (verse 3), “and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (verse 17).
hovering
The winds were so strong on the beach that day that the flock of birds above me seemed to be hovering. They literally weren’t moving. At all. They were completely stationary. The winds were moving so strongly below them, that they held them in the air.
I felt like one of those birds that day. I felt stationary, but I felt so strengthened by God’s promise that He was moving in those winds of change.
I thought of Isaiah 40:31–
But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and now grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
I typed this into my phone as I walked home–
Today I could be in complete despair. God has stripped me of so much. So much certainty. So much control–albeit a false sense of control.
And yet, today? I’m lifted high in hope.
I’ve got a prayer rock in my back pocket, the wind guiding me home, and a smile on my face that can only be explained by the mystery of our great and creative God.I told Clay the other night, “I have more peace in this moment than I think I ever have in my life thus far, and yet I am exercising the least control I ever have.”
That’s the power of the Holy Spirit.
As I continue to wait for so many things, I am encouraged as I remember back on God’s faithfulness in my life and long to cling to that overwhelming sense of hope. For I realize that even in that season of feeling so stuck–like I was hovering–God was working behind the scenes. He never left my side.
Whatever you are facing today, or whatever you are waiting to face today, my prayer is that you would find hope in what’s coming, find strength in the God who stands with you in the stillness and in the running, and find peace in the present as you remember His faithfulness on your journey thus far.
And when you hear His voice speak, write it down. For in time He will prove it to be true.
Would all these remembrances be tools of armor as you face the Enemy, fight against his lies, and triumph through the Spirit. As Francesca Battistelli sings,
“The stones in your hand might be small, but watch the giants fall.”
