It's raining. One of those torrential, coming at you from every direction kind of rains. The sort of storm where in the short dash from your car to the house, you're drenched and your shoes have become personal puddles for your feet. Fortunately, I've already done the dash, and I'm now comfortably sitting inside--the best vantage point for this particular category of rain. From the warmth of my couch, with a cup of hot tea, I can watch as the room illuminates with each flash of lightning. I find a thunderstorm strangely calming. I don't know if it's the methodical, gentle beat of the raindrops on the window, or the sudden bursts of thunder, but I always find myself breathing a little easier during thunderstorms.

Seems odd, doesn't it? Aren't we supposed to be afraid of thunderstorms? As children, we would cower under our blankets and shut our eyes to the eerie lightning. Everything about the storm raging outside seemed wrong and dangerous. Why is it then, that I always feel relieved when a storm rolls in? When did the wrong and dangerous grow into soothing and comforting?

I'm fascinated by the way God works. I understand it, oooooh, about .01% of the time. But I'm not the first to feel that way. I'm sure Noah was confused when he was told to build an ark when he'd never even seen rain. Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son--the son through whom he'd become a great nation. Moses wandered around the desert for 40 years, and poor David lived in constant danger of a murderous and vindictive king. Jeremiah spent time in the bottom of a well, Daniel was sent to a den of lions, Paul was imprisoned multiple times, while the Apostle John was exiled to his very own island. Even God said, "I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." (Isaiah 58:8 The Message) So yeah. I don't really understand how God works, or even why He does what He does.

But I suppose, that in the end, it doesn't really matter. I've kept a journal since my senior year of high school. I was starting a new era in my life, and I felt like all of a sudden, I had something worth remembering. I can look back at those journal entries and read all about my fears and stresses and confusion. And now, 10 years later, I can connect the dots. I can see how one particularly scary and terrible situation actually led me to something good. I can recognize the growth and stretching I acquired, and I see how it's helped me to become who I am today. I didn't see it then. But I see it now. I don't know exactly when the bad became the good...but it happened nonetheless. And the comfort in that is that I know someday, I'll look back on this particular period in my life and see the good God will bring out of it.

I've been fund-raising for seven months now, and it's certainly been an on-going process--one that's not nearly over. It is, hands down, the single most challenging experience of my life. I'm in a position where I am completely relying on what I feel God's led me to do...trusting that He'll bring about all the resources to do it. It's not that I doubt He's able....I just, well, I doubt. I'm human. Sometimes, I feel like this process is a scary, thundering storm where I'm being battered by wind and rain. There are days when I feel half-drowned and exhausted; but, I take comfort in the fact that someday, I'll be able to look back at this and think, "Oh! So that's what was going on!"

God certainly moves in mysterious ways. Just as thunderstorms have evolved from terrifying ordeals into consoling respites for me, so will this experience of fund-raising be used for good in my life. Everything happens for a reason, and God, in His infinite mercy, always uses the experiences in our lives for good. That's not to say there won't be storms...He just promises to stick with us through them and bring good out of them. What a promise!

So for now, let it rain. Let the lightning strike, let the thunder roar, and let the drops beat violently on the window panes. I'm not alone, nor am I afraid. God takes my bad and uses it for good, and by trusting in that promise, I can endure and even enjoy this tempest.