When It Feels Like Everything Is Out of Control

We don’t have central air conditioning. It’s Montana, so we have many months that require flannel sheets but only a few weeks in each year that require lemonade. I have low tolerance for those hot days in the 80’s and 90’s, though, so when I wake up in the middle of the night (always), I put a box fan in the window. This draws in the cool night air and helps the house stay bearable during the day. I pride myself on this. When the kids were young, one morning I had a personal best and had cooled the house down to 53 degrees.

“Put a sweater on!” I would yell when everyone would complain. “You’ll thank me for this cool air when it’s 95 degrees this afternoon.” (The way my son tells it, you would think he now needs therapy because of me or something.)

Anyway.

Life is stressful. My heart weighs heavy for Israel and coming up on almost a year of praying for the hostages and for the “peace of Jerusalem.” Every day I pick up the mail and have to wash the mud off of my hands from all of the caustic election campaign flyers. Plus, we started at our new church in late spring, and getting settled there has been that good kind of stress where you’re getting to know new people and finding new rhythms and building new systems. And did I mention six sets of summer company came to visit followed by my week of Covid on our own vacation. Also, I have a job, and there is stress that comes with work, which sometime deserves its own blog post.  

“How was your summer?” people ask. The answer to that question is so full. It feels like the answer should only contain words like garden and burgers on the grill and vacation, but those words are only an inch deep for what June, July, and August really meant for my heart, mind, and soul.

When I woke up in the night and went to set the box fan in the laundry room window, I stopped every time in breathtaking wonder. There in the summer, framed perfectly by the window, was the big dipper.

“Ah yes,” I said in the dark. “You, O God, created the world. You put those stars in place. You are the Almighty God who is in control of everything, and because of you everything is going to be okay.” I stood at the window, letting the firmament remind me of God. Letting the truth and the cool night air dissipate my stress.

Matt has had bouts of vertigo in the past. Sometimes vertigo is caused by spine issues and sometimes by inner ear issues, but for Matt it was visual. The physical therapist gave him eye exercises, and one of those was to go for walks and keep his eyes up and looking around. The therapist said that as people get older, they tend to look down at their feet to keep their balance and equilibrium, so as we age, we need to practice looking up.

We need to practice looking up.

Election campaigns and world events and work stress and life changes can give you vertigo. Feels like the world is spinning underneath your feet. It is. All creation is groaning as if in birthing pains. We are in the last days, and Jesus promises us they will be dark and hard before he comes back.

But if all we do is look down at election flyers and news reports and the challenges in our lives, our heads will spin until we want to vomit. We have to look up. Look up and remember who put the big dipper in the sky.

How was my summer, you ask? It was really good.

God was there outside my window.