How to Take a Life

HOW TO TAKE A LIFE

by jeremy vess

I found myself
Looking down the barrel of a smoking gun
Finding I could get hurt and then hurt some one

And I do confess
That I took my aim so carefully
Oh I plotted and schemed
Put the blame on me

And I do admit
I wasn't wrong
But I wasn't right
To kill someone

You bottle your hurt
Throw up your pride
Disconnect, then run and hide

Just hate your brother to take a life

In the mirror it starts to show
Though the poison I took was slow
It attacks your heart
Then takes your mind

And I do admit
I wasn't wrong
But I wasn't right
To kill someone

You bottle your hurt
Throw up your pride
Disconnect, then run and hide

Just hate your brother to take a life


Brother in the night
Your face haunts my dreams and stalks my life
Sister I want you to know
That I won't hate you anymore
I'm letting you go
As I should have before


And I do admit
I wasn't wrong
But I wasn't right
To kill someone

You bottle your hurt
Throw up your pride
Disconnect, then run and hide

Just hate your brother to take a life

Mourning the Death of Relationship

Last night, I started a bible class that expounds on the the trap of being offended by betrayal and hurt. And lets face it, everyone has been offended at some point; and, if you haven't, you will be sooner or later. Perhaps you're already offended that I said you'd be offended. 

Towards the end of the session I was reminded of a hurt I still had from someone whom I considered close to me. This person was a spiritual family member to me, whom I received some good counsel and advice from during my formative teenage and young adult years. 

The hurt came about almost two years ago when there was a sharp disagreement and after several heart to heart meetings to try to bring about reconciliation we had to settle that the friendship was over. We left on as good of terms as we could, hugging it out, but lets face it -- when you're hurt a hug doesn't do much to console your true feelings. After that they cut me off as if I didn't exist. In return, I confess, I did the same, removing them from my Facebook list of friends, even blocking them and simply avoiding them at all costs; not because I hated them, but because it just hurt to see them.

It wasn't perhaps the most tactful way to deal with this, but at the time seemed like the only way either company knew how. In the end it became a Paul and Barnabas scenario where we just had to go our separate ways.

"They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord." Acts 15:39

Now had this been someone that I didn't much like to begin with, I believe this parting of ways would have been like ripping off a band aid. Sure it would have stung at first, but that would have quickly passed and I would have been free to go on to my other endeavors unscathed.  

This, however, was not the situation. Instead this was someone who taught me in Sunday school when I was a kid, someone who gave me some good advice when I needed it and someone who, at one time, gave me and my wife gifts to let us know we meant something to them. And then in one swift disagreement I felt disowned and abandoned, and found out later I was slandered even by the same lips that once gave us praise. This hurt...bad. 

If an enemy were insulting me,
   I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
   I could hide.
But it is you, a man like myself,
   my companion, my close friend,
with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
   at the house of God,
as we walked about 

among the worshipers. 

            -Psalm 55:12b-14

My hurt was real and it stung. Nearly two years after the incident, I'm sitting in this class about hurt and offense and thinking about this person that disowned me. When it first happened I was very angry and as I mentioned earlier reacted by trying to disconnect from them in order to avoid the pain. And for months after I asked God to help me forgive. Daily I would have to pray, "Lord I forgive _______." But somehow the hurt remained, and because the hurt remained it would sometimes conjure up more anger towards that person.  

Last night as I came home I started talking things over with my wife. As we were discussing it all there was a knock at the door. A friend had come by to randomly check up on me. As we sat down and started talking I told him about what I was going through.

He began to tell me a story about his own similar experience. He said that he had a friend betray him in the past and that although they worked it out the best they could and forgave each other, there was just no saving the relationship. He said that this sadness still wells up in his heart every time he sees this person out and about to this day. He instructed me that perhaps what I'm dealing with is the mourning of this relationship as one mourns the death of a friend.

I've been told that for divorced people it can be twice as hard to deal with as someone who loses a loved one who dies, because where a loved one passes on and the memory lingers on, for a divorcee their loved one simply leaves yet they are still physically around, haunting each other with hurt memories and a life that could have been. Plus, the deceased had no choice in the matter of leaving, every man owes a death. However, for those willing to walk out on a loved one, they leave behind a harsh scar of abandonment and rejection. 

So where does this leave me? I'm at a place now where I have fully forgiven, but there still remains a place of sorrow for the time of fellowship I once had. You can't avoid offenses; all you can do is get over them and forgive. And sometimes friendships fall apart. Its part of life. As you grow older, you change, and because you change sometimes that affects the way people perceive you and relate to you. The moment that a trial or hardship comes, some people only know how to abandon and move on. Its a defense mechanism that you can't adjust for others, only yourself. So, therefore, because people make mistakes, relationships fall apart and sometimes the only option is to just move on.

For me, I'm alright with that as a last resort. I never made a vow to be with anyone for the rest of my life other than my wife. And that's the only relationship I would fight til death to keep. As for other friendships and relationships I've realized that they come and go in seasons. I've been blessed with many friends all over the world and I share sweet fellowship with them in seasons. Some, however, I've had to move on from because we just grew apart. That I can deal with fine when they end with a simple goodbye. Its the times that they end in hurt that bother me.

So, who knows? Paul and Barnabas did end up many years later patching things up and working together in fellowship again. For everyone who has lost a friend due to a sharp disagreement, I encourage you to forgive, to mourn your loss and then to remember the good things about those you have lost in order that you may bless them with the love of God. Perhaps this is only for a season. All I know is forgiveness is never an option, it is undoubtedly mandatory.

"For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

-Matthew 6:14-15

I am just glad that God always loves me even if I have chosen, at times, to part ways with Him, yet He always takes me back with open arms.

Things I'm Learning

Its been some time since I've dusted off my blog-spot to post anything new. To be honest it's been rather intentional, because I've felt rather embarrassed by some of my past postings. When you are under pressure and people hurt you its easy to fly off the handle and use something like this as a mechanism to vent all your frustrations with people, the church, and quite frankly the world.  However, I'm learning that its better to hold back some things if I'm angry.

Fools vent their anger,
      but the wise quietly hold it back.

-Proverbs 29:11

I feel that I'm about to use some examples that may be considered cliche, but I believe them to be relevant. A piece of plain coal is only formed into a diamond under immense pressure. And gold is only purified through extreme fire and heat. Anything considered precious and rare is only considered that because it first endured an incredibly long and hard transformation. 

  'I will refine them like silver
   and test them like gold.
They will call on my name
   and I will answer them;
I will say, ‘They are my people,’
   and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God.'

Zechariah 13:9

This process is hard. It hurts, it stings, and it burns. And yet for every trial and hardship He is teaching me that His grace is sufficient for me. And I'm learning that I can do nothing on my own volition. I'm completely dependent upon Him. For me when all is said and done I'm left with the choice to learn from the past, but not to dwell on it. And to allow God's Holy Spirit to heal me and teach me to forgive. This is the process. This is the reformation. 

Mexico: part uno

Part Uno:

As we crossed over the border into Mexico stories of drug lords and images of U.S. citizens being kidnapped raced through my brain. I thought to myself, "I could be crossing right now into my death." I was then reminded of what the Lord told me over a year ago, that He was sending me to nations as an ambassador. Trusting that word, my faith was increased that I would not die on this trip, as I had many nations yet to visit.  

Going back a few weeks prior, I'm having a dream one night where I was the wolf boy in that Twilight movie New Moon. Now you should realize why I didn't start off with this statement. Its embarassing enough as a man at age 30 to admit that you've seen both movie installments of Twilight, but to admit that you dream about it gives plenty of ammo for people to poke fun. However, in my defense, my wife wanted to see the movies, and to be honest I was pleasantly entertained by the first one, so to go see the second movie wasn't that difficult for me. Anyway, enough said about that.

In my dream I was in a field and like in the movie I was this young man who was changing and could feel it deep within. It was night and as I looked out I noticed at the edge of the field these men standing there on the edge of the wilderness. They looked back at me and I knew these were the men in the movie that were werewolves and they looked at me as if to say, "its time for you to come out and learn who you are." I was hesitant though as fear gripped me. The thought of becoming what many consider a monster did not sit well with me. Not to mention the many dangers that are very present in the wild where wild things live. In my dream though I knew this moment may not present itself again, so with little hesitation I ran off into the wilderness with these wild men to become what was in my blood. 

I woke up from the dream and the Lord immediately began to write upon my heart. He said, "I have called you into the wild, and it is time for you to become what I have anointed  you to be. Do not be afraid, but come out from where you are into the wilderness, where I AM. " I laid there in bed trying to discern what I had just encountered. Its so strange sometimes the illustrations God uses to get our attention. While many believers have boycotted the movies, here I found God using it to speak to me in my sleep.  

The next day was I received a call from Grover Hope. Now, Grover Hope is a wild man if I've ever seen one. He lives in Cleveland, Tennessee and has a very strong Tennessee mountain drawl in regards to his accent. He's a man in his sixty's, but has more energy than most twenty-somethings. To many he is controversial, but to me he's been an inspiration of quick obedience to what the Lord is asking. In all my years I have yet to learn from people what I have learned from him. Sometimes I have to un-offend myself in order to hear clearly what he is saying. I say that because he has called me out on my tendency to choose sleep over seek and I am still learning how to rise early and seek the Father. He also just has a way of phrasing things that step out of the box of religious clamor, and yet he still holds to the idea that the King James Bible is the only one you can really get true understanding from. So I'm perfectly honest when I say that I believe the verdict is still out on that, however, my ears are open to any translation that speaks to me. 

I love this man of God though because he claims to be nothing more than a man in love with Jesus and spends endless hours in prayer and studying the Word of God to the point it makes you feel convicted for the 15 minutes you spent with the Lord that day so you could appease your religious duties and say you spent time with the Lord. We did, but did it change us? And did it reveal a new layer of our Father to us? These are the honest questions that present themselves to me when I hang out with Grover. It stretches me and pushes me. I have a love/hate relationship with these feelings, but in the end I grow in the Lord. At the same time this man is completely human and is one of the quirkiest fellows I believe I have ever met. I only hope that you have a chance to meet someone like him in your life. 

That day Grover called me on the phone and asked if I'd be willing to come with him to Mexico on an outreach trip. To which I asked, "well, depends, how long and when it is?" To which he responded, "next month and its three weeks." I have never been three weeks in a different country before and I only had a month to raise a substantial amount of money. Oh and did I mention that he wanted to drive down there?  I chose the safe response and said, "let me pray about it." 

Immediately as I hung up the phone the Lord raced through my mind the dream from the night before and whispered to my heart, "it doesn't get much wilder than this."  In a vision I saw us driving down and my friend Michael Anthony Roseman was with us. So I called him up. He and his wife were in Colorado at the time for a wedding. I told him about the trip and his response was something like, "hang on, let me ask my wife." I could hear them talking about it for a minute and when he picked the phone back up he said, "sure, Laura said it was okay, she think's it'll be good for me." I love that couple. 

That reminded me and I then called my wife to tell her about this wild trip. Without hesitation she said, "sure." That was all the confirmation I needed to hear to respond with, 'okay, this is it, it doesn't get much wilder than Grover Hope, Michael Anthony Roseman and myself in a van driving to Mexico, this is it! Let's go!"  So I called back Grover to tell him that we were in; we had no idea how we were going to afford to get there, but we were in. 

Soon after this conversation, Christmas occurred and my wife and I went to visit family in Florida. We had planned on being there about two weeks and during our stay it began to occur to me that we needed lots of funds to get down to Mexico for this three week expedition. However, I had a peace about that.  I knew that something this crazy had to be from the Lord so I also knew that He would provide the funding. 

When I came back home from Florida we had about 3 weeks to come up with what was then about $1500. Michael and I talked about it and agreed that $1500 was nothing for the God of the universe! However, we needed a God derived plan. Immediately as we prayed I got an idea for two things. One was Facebook. We would just post our need on Facebook. "You have not because you ask not." So we would just ask.  Second, Michael and myself are singers and songwriters, so we would host two concerts to raise the money. 

Then I received another call from Grover. Elaine Wilburn, the missionary who had invited us to come and had set up all the meetings for us, had been asked by the pastors in Mexico if we could bump our trip up by a week to come down earlier.  This would mean our trip would be extended to four weeks instead of three.  So a whole month in Mexico, meaning our expenses would go up and we have even less time to raise them. 

Okay, I was nervous. Did I mention that I stepped down from my salary position several months earlier, as I knew the Lord had asked me to, in order to step into full time ministry called Be the Reformation, (which is still in the start up phase). I heard one time that faith is stepping out on a limb and sawing away the tree. I had done that and now I was being asked to come up with money that I couldn't even really afford on a salary, not to mention on the little I was now making doing carpentry work on the side. This faith thing seemingly gets harder instead of easier sometimes. However, what I've discovered is that no amount of worry or anxiety will make anything happen, it actually hinders a work of faith, as faith must have absolute trust in order to be true faith. Best thing anyone every told me was from a friend named Frank Harvey, he said, "When God speaks to you, listen to it and let any man be a called a liar that would try to dispute it!" 

So with that in mind, we set out to raise money with only two weeks before our launch date. I placed a statement on facebook of our need and within a week checks started coming in left and right from close friends, to friends from over seven years ago, to people I hardly knew at all. Then we played a show at a local tavern and in the midst of playing our songs with the band, people came up and dropped money in our offering bucket to send us to the people of Mexico to preach the gospel and minister in song. When the wonderful whirlwind of the weekend had settled there was more than enough money to send us to Mexico and help out with some bills at home. God is good. 

To be continued...

Church of (insert your name here).

Obedience is always better than sacrifice!


I'm ever amazed at my generation. They won't tithe and then complain that the church is struggling! How can such a clear and easy concept be lost on people?


⁶ "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. ⁷ Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty.
      "But you ask, 'How are we to return?'

⁸ "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. 
      "But you ask, 'How do we rob you?' 
     
 "In tithes and offerings. ⁹ You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. ¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. ¹¹ I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. ¹² "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty.


(matthew 22:20-22, mark 12:17)


Luke 20:22
Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" He saw through their duplicity and said to them, "Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription are on it?" 
"Caesar's," they replied. 


 He said to them, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."


Tithing is a command, not a philosophy or theology. Its a command that says the least you can do is give 10% of your income to the place you are fed your bread. The crazy thing about it is God doesn't need your money, but if you will simply do this act of obedience, He is promising to bless you. So by robbing Him, you are ironically robbing yourself! 


Here's the problem, people think "Oh I get my bread from such and such online, but I socialize with my church!" You get your bread from whoever you submit to! Thats the problem. We want a reformation, but will not submit ourselves to the authority God places over us that will lead us into it. We want a buddy instead of a pastor and if we feel he's somehow overlooked us, we'll abandon him, despite the fact that they cover us and bear the brunt of our foolishness.  


I remember that one time I went up to my pastor in after service. I told him who I was, as if to expect that he would be impressed, and then waited for some glorious handshake and conversational response. Instead he barely made eye contact with me and looked at his watch and said, "Well, it's about time we all get out of here for lunch; see ya later."  


I could have been offended and then left for such "disrespect" of a shepherd to a sheep. I was there for him to say, "Come, follow me son and we'll win every nation in our generation." Instead, I was made humble and the Lord said, "You can leave offended or suck it up and sit under this apostle through obedience to receive an apostolic anointing." I chose the latter and the moral of the story is that I had to choose obedience.  


I could have labored and sacrificed in prayer for God to change his heart so that I would be elevated to some amazing postion or I could just sit and listen. To sit and listen, I actually learned. To tithe unto this apostle, laying our tithes and offerings at his feet brought a blessing for Jess and I. Tithing is for our blessing! Sitting and waiting under the people God puts over you is for your blessing! You want to be blessed, then start with obedience, not sacrifice!  


I was talking yesterday with a friend about our culture and society. We want a church that on the sign reads, "Church of (insert your name here)". People get offended if the music doesn't match their taste, the air temperature isn't what meets their comfort, sound is too loud or soft, music is too rock or country, and (my favorite) "the message is either too much of a shotgun message, rifle message, or its just too evangelistic." All shit! All shit! All shit! All shit!  


We've come to the storehouse of God to fling our feces on it's walls and write our names in it. Then we ask why the Holy Spirit doesn't move or healings don't take place. We have made everything about ourselves and are not willing to pay any price for change. We take pride in our amounts of prayer time and yet won't even obey something simple, like love your neighbor as yourself or bring your tithes to the storehouse and even test Him in our overflow of giving.


Sheep and goats. Sheep and goats. We are either going to be a sheep led or a goat that butts it's master! God I pray He shows us grace so that we might have the hearts and minds of sheep and not goats. What will it take for us as the people of God to repent and obey? How low does He have to bring us before we turn from our wickedness? If we aren't young, disobedient, and stupid we seem to be old, disobedient, and stupid. The young want change without sacrifice and obedience, and the old want comfort without sacrifice and obedience.  


The young are busy trying to throw out the old for the sake of change and the old are busy trying to cling to yesterday's manna even when God said, "Collect what you need for today and no more," so that they would always have fresh manna.


"Then the LORD said to Moses, 


'I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.'  


17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed. 19 Then Moses said to them, 'No one is to keep any of it until morning.'  


20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them." (from Exodus 16)  


We keep doing the same thing. Holding on to yesterday's manna (if we collect any at all). Those who store their manna instead of eating and digesting it are now full of maggots and have a spiritual stench that is off-putting to the Lord and any seeker. Its time to repent, church, for we are suppose to be the spotless bride of Christ, not the haggard old woman protecting dusty cathedrals!

Reformation

Taken from Journal Entry 12-31-09

I received a revelation this morning that the word reformation is truly the equivalent of words like revolution, or declaration. Somehow we suppress this notion to assume that reformation invokes a peaceful resolve to change. Reformation for many conjures an illusion of prayer vigils and peace rallies that quietly change hearts and minds from the inside out. Reformation is however, quite the contrary.

Reformation equates death threats, accusations of heresy and slanderous gossip of all kinds. Reformation means public crucifixion for whomever is bold enough to lead it. Peaceful prayer rallies are met with violent armed men with water hoses, guard dogs and tear gas. Public beatings and private torture are reserved for anyone committed enough to stand firm til the end. Anyone who feels called to a reformation must be willing to count the cost. However, anyone willing to follow Jesus as lord and truly do what He says needs to understand they are signing up for a great reformation.

Jesus is always doing something new. And with the introduction of something new comes the immediate resistance by the old, not only because the old by nature disagrees, but because it is bursting the containers of what held and protected the old. Reformation must occur in order to refit the old containers for the new content that must fill them.

From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr. reformation has been the advocate for the innocent who have been lost admist the hiearchy of religion and science and trambled under the traditions of men, in order to point men back to the true image of Christ. I am thankful for such men who would lay everything on the line to stand firm for what is right. I only hope to be such a man in my lifetime.

Aftermath

Proverbs 10:25  
When the storm has swept by, the wicked are gone, but the righteous stand firm forever.

I've been through a lot of storms in my life. In September 1989, I was a 10 year old boy who experienced a hurricane named Hugo. We were 200 miles inland and yet the storm maintained so much intensity that it knocked over trees and pounded our house with wind and rain for several hours. We were left with no running water or electricity for a week or two.

I remember standing in our downstairs closet when the wind was really bad. Thoughts of our roof coming off and having to endure this hurricane face to face ran through my young mind that night. That never happened, but just the thought of it terrified me.

When the sun dawned on the scene early the next morning we found shingles missing from our roof and branches of trees scattered across our yard. We discovered we were without power or running water and for the next couple weeks we lived a more simpler life, but we were fine. We just picked up the pieces of what the storm had done.

About a year later in the same house I remember it being a beautiful day, windy but absolutely gorgeous outside. I had been playing with my younger brother and had come in to the house for a break. I went upstairs where we had a sliding glass window in our dining room. I had come to get something to drink and something drew me to the window. As I looked out on our house's property I noticed a giant oak tree swaying in the wind back where our property line met our distant neighbor's heavily wooded forest. This grand oak swayed towards us and shook as if some invisible hand had grabbed its massive trunk to jostle it.

Suddenly out of no where this massive cloud came rolling over the tops of the trees and this 100 foot oak nearly bent over, along with every other tree around it. The wind was so strong and my mother yelled for me and my brother to run down stairs. I was mesmerized by everything going on and when I snapped out of my daze, I ran quickly to our basement. My mom tucked us away in our tiny closet located downstairs in the center of our house. I remember being so scared that my knees were knocking together uncontrollably.

And then just as quickly as this chaos began it stopped.

We ventured outside to see what had happened and to our surprise it wasn't much.  On the back side of our house leaves from the forest that nestled up to our property were scattered everywhere. To the front of our house a small dogwood tree had been uprooted and the cover to our well pump had been moved 200 yards away by the impressive wind storm we encountered. Shaken, but not harmed, we immediately began picking up the pieces of our yard.

Jump forward several years, I was a teenager and we had moved to a small town called China Grove. We moved there to live with my grandmother who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. We moved in to take care of her.

We were suppose to be leaving soon for a Vess family reunion, but soon for the Vess family meant that we were always at least two hours behind. My uncle had come by to pick up my grandmother earlier that day. My dad was yelling at my younger brother who was acting up exceptionally bad and for what ever reason, neither wanted to go to this reunion and especially did not want to get ready to leave.

The forecast called for scattered thunderstorms that day, but no one predicted what we saw.

Just about the time we were all finally ready and willing to leave it started to rain really hard. Then lightning and tremendously loud thunder kicked in. Then it began to get really strange. Suddenly the garage doors started to go up and down by themselves. Then it started to hail.

Now I had grown accustomed to seeing hail from time to time, and as it started to do so I noticed that there was an exceptional amount of it this time. You could hear the hail ping-ponging off our roof and it almost seemed soothing for sometime.

However, that did not last long. Out of no where it sounded like men were standing on our roof and hitting it with Louisville sluggers. We looked outside and the tiny marble sized hail balls had grown to become the size of golf balls.  Then it sounded like there was an exchange of the Louisville slugger for something with a little more weight, like say a sledge hammer. We looked out and there was softball sized hail pounding our yard and house.

We ran downstairs and brought our terrified dogs inside. My brother was about in tears and I was nervous, as well as my dad. My mother on the other hand was surprisingly excited as she began to shout, "Thank you Jesus! It's the end times, Jesus is coming soon!" To which we found more annoying than encouraging, as her yelling only frightened the dogs more and shook my nerves a little more to be perfectly honest.

The onslaught of this hail beating continued for several minutes.

The aftermath resulted in our minivan (that we had moved outside from the garage, because we were finally ready to go) being totally destroyed. Remember that scene at the end Michael Jackson's video Black or White where he turned into a panther, sashayed up to a car, turned back into a human, played with his zipper and then proceeded to beat the hell out of somebodies car with a baseball bat? Well, it was worse than that.  It looked like a whole army of people with baseball bats beat our poor minivan. The front and back windows were shattered and the roof was totally beaten in. It was incredible.

Tree limbs were down everywhere and not to mention softball to melon sized hail balls covered our yard and our neighbor's yard. I have a friend that said they actually had a hail log bust through their roof and land in their living room. We immediately went to work picking up the pieces of our car and house and trying to clean up what we could.

The truth is that storms will always come whether you think you are good or you know you are bad. You never feel like you deserve them and you find yourself feeling small and vulnerable in the midst of them.  And, if you're strong enough, you find yourself picking up the pieces from the aftermath of a storm. So long as you still have a foundation to build on, you rebuild. Or if your house was strong enough to endure the winds, rain and hail of whatever category storm you faced, then you simply repair the damage.  The test is not the fact that you experienced a storm, but rather the test is what you do after the experience. Did the experience wash you out? Did it move you on? Even still, did you learn from it? Did it change you, refine you, purge you? Or are you still the same? I'm speaking more figuratively than literally.

To remain unfazed is wonderful if you truly believe that you were perfect to begin with, but who really is? I believe that any storm you face in life can shake you and even crush you, but does that define you? No, its not the storm that defines who I am, the storm is only there to refine me. To chisel away the rough edges and smooth out the unrefined characteristics. Its the storms in life that push me from point A to point B or redirect me from taking point C. Either way storms come and they happen to everybody. However, its in the aftermath that you can discover new things about yourself.

Its in the rebuilding that you can remodel and reinforce yourself. Truth is, a storm will either make you stronger or weaker depending on your reaction.