Remember as a kid the fear associated with a storm outside? Especially in the middle of the night when the lightning lit up your bedroom and the thunder shook the entire house? You tried to stay calm but the uncertainty of when the next thunder sounded, or the next lightning strike kept you awake? We always thought we would eventually outgrow the fear of a storm when in reality, storms follow us throughout the course of life--both literally and figuratively. 

Everyone has their own storms they face. And right now, let’s be honest, we are all experiencing the same storm, otherwise known as a pandemic. And without a doubt, this is not your average size storm. Even within this large storm, we each have our own occurring simultaneously. For my family and me, our storm was my cousin Ryan’s rapidly worsening battle with cancer. Ryan was about a year into his fight with cancer when he passed away peacefully on October 30th, 2020. If experiencing his death wasn’t hard enough, this combined with the pandemic, resulted in an unfathomable storm to trek through. Although Ryan was able to properly say goodbye to some close family in hospice care, he was unable to adequately and fully receive love from all of the lives he touched in his 32 years on this earth, which included me. The last time I saw Ryan was late August, which I would have never imagined being the last time hearing his voice. 

When I was at Ryan’s home after attending the funeral, I noticed a framed Bible verse on their table. 

It said: Focus on Me, not the storm. Matthew 14:22-23

In situations when you lose a loved one, it is so easy to question why God would allow this to happen to such a young man and why he had to leave his wife and two beautiful children so early. Similarly, it is easy to question why he is putting the entire world through a pandemic resulting in terrible loss, uncertainty, and isolation. When asking these questions, we are focusing on the storm. However, Jesus calls us to focus on Him even in the midst of the darkest storms. 

At a Dare to Be conference in 2019, Charlotte Gambill preached saying even though God puts us through these storms, God is not only with us in the storm but is at the eye of the storm. What most people don’t know is that the eye of the storm is actually the calmest place to be in a storm. God is a constant, centered love in the middle of any storm we may face.

Now, instead of letting the lightning or thunder keep you up at night like it did when you were a kid, sleep peacefully knowing that God is at the eye of any storm you are currently facing. Don’t focus on everything happening around you, focus on Him.

Morgan Allen, Graduate Student and Member of the Women’s Basketball Team at IUPUI