A note before this: this reflection is personal, and it's meant to be — this is the one slot in the week where first-person testimony belongs.
There's a storm I lived that I don't always know how to put into words.
What I Only Saw at the Time
May 13, 2021, and everything since — including a diagnosis I didn't ask for and don't get to choose — has been its own kind of ongoing storm. For a long time, I only knew how to see the parts of it that felt like absence. The fear. The uncertainty. The things I can't do the same way I used to.
What Tracing It Back Actually Showed Me
It's only looking back now — tracing it the same way I'm asking you to trace your own storm this week — that I can actually point to the moments He was there the whole time. In a wife who stayed. In a mission that came out of the worst day of my life instead of ending it. In songs that keep landing exactly when I need them to, week after week, more consistently than coincidence should explain.
I didn't see any of that while I was in it. I only see it now, looking back.
Why This Matters for You
That's what this whole theme has been about — not waiting for Him to show up, but finding out, eventually, that He never left. If you're still in the middle of your own storm and you can't see it yet either, that doesn't mean it isn't there. It might just mean you haven't traced back far enough yet.
— JDOT Pine
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