When my brother abruptly cut me out of his life in late 2017, I was mystified. I had no idea what I could have possibly done. One day, we were fine, and the next, he had blocked me on everything.
Not one to instinctually let Jesus take the wheel on anything, I made sure to get my piece in from email addresses he didn’t know, and therefore hadn’t blocked. If I was going to be stricken from someone’s life, I was going to make sure I earned it. I shot written daggers that I knew would anger and hurt the most. When I realized my words had gone past the point of no return, I doubled down and went a step further.
Miraculously, my brother accepted my apology when I reached out to him last October after zero contact for 6 years. That is when he revealed that he had been going through a trying time, and rather than reveal that he was hurting to those who loved him, he chose to shut down and go it alone.
But once we reconnected, we quickly rebuilt an even stronger relationship. Even better, we built an authentic friendship.
A few weeks ago, tornadoes hit Houston, Texas, where my brother lives. He called me as the weather intensified, describing the dark sky, the wind that would die down and then kick up again every five minutes, the crash of nearby lightening that took down the power in his neighborhood.
It occurred to me then the significance of the conversation we were having. Previously, he chose to weather his personal storm alone. Now, of all the people he could have reached out to during a physical storm, I was the one who came to mind. We rode the storm out together…
…in more ways than one.
“He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed.” Psalm 107:29
