Recently my husband and I traveled by ship through Icelandic waters on our way to Reykjavik. The captain of the ship warned us of conditions we were entering. The weather station called them “gale-force winds.” There were eighteen-foot swells. Spitting icy rain. Gray skies. White caps. You could feel the power of the sea everywhere. Walking down the hallways of the ship required intention. Lying in bed meant surrendering to the movement. Looking out the window made it impossible to ignore the size of the waves billowing around us.
And somewhere in the middle of it, I started thinking about how much this feels like life. There are storms we simply cannot control. We can fight them. Fear them. Study them. Distract ourselves from them. We can exhaust ourselves wishing they were different. But trying to control some circumstances is about as useful as me standing on the deck and throwing a lasso around an 18-foot wave. Futile. The wind is going to blow. The waves are going to come.
So what does make a difference when we find ourselves in the middle of something we cannot change? I started thinking about three things: posture, position, and view.
Our posture
How we hold ourselves matters. In rough waters, sometimes I was lying down. Sometimes I was carefully walking. Sometimes I was bracing against the movement, albeit wobbly. Life has postures too. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we brace. Sometimes we move toward the hard thing. And sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is surrender to the reality that we cannot make the storm stop. Surrender isn’t giving up. It is releasing our fight with what already is. We will be wobbly because we’re human, and life’s storms are like gale force winds. There are times when strength looks like moving forward and times when strength looks like retreating to our room, getting quiet, resting, and noticing what all the movement is stirring within us.
Our position matters too.
Where we place ourselves in relation to the storm matters too. There was a significant difference between experiencing those waves from my bed, from the hallway, and from the ice cold wet deck. The closer I got, the more powerful and potentially dangerous it felt. Sometimes we believe courage means getting as close to the storm as possible. It doesn’t. Instead, wisdom asks: Where do I need to be right now? There are times to move closer. There are times to step away. There are times to seek shelter. We don’t have to prove our strength by standing in places that aren’t safe.
Our view matters, too.
What we look at matters. We can stare directly into the waves. We can watch them through the protection of glass. We can listen to someone else describe what is happening. Each gives us a different experience of the same storm. The same is true with information. During difficult seasons, information can orient us. It can help us understand what is happening and make wise decisions. But more information isn’t always better. There is a point when checking again, reading another update, hearing another person’s interpretation, or replaying what might happen next or should have happened before stops informing us and starts feeding our fear or disappointment. Sometimes we need to know what is happening. Sometimes we need to turn off the news. And sometimes we need to trust the captain.
Trust the people who know these waters.
I didn’t know how to navigate a ship through Icelandic waters in gale-force winds. Thankfully, I didn’t need to. Someone else knew these waters. Someone else understood the ship. Someone else had navigated storms before. There is tremendous peace in recognizing when we aren’t the captain. And we can’t possibly captain every ship and every storm. In life’s storms, we need people who have been through difficult waters successfully. People whose wisdom has been tested. People who aren’t frightened by our fear and don’t need to pretend the storm isn’t serious.
Sometimes wisdom isn’t figuring everything out ourselves. Sometimes wisdom is knowing who to trust during the storms. But perhaps the thing that struck me most wasn’t the captain. It wasn’t even the anchor (sorry to all those with anchor tats!) Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for an anchor, but in this case an anchor would have kept us where we were. And we weren’t trying to stay there. We were trying to get somewhere. What we needed were stabilizers.
Find your stabilizers.
A ship’s stabilizers don’t stop the storm. They don’t calm the wind. They don’t flatten 18-foot waves. They don’t change the destination. They help the ship move through the conditions around it without being controlled by every movement of the sea. That’ll preach, I thought. And that’s when I grabbed a pen and started writing.
We need stabilizers too. People who hold steady beside us. Practices that return us to ourselves. Prayer. Rest. Breathing. Scripture. Healthy routines. Boundaries. People who remind us what is true when everything underneath us seems to be moving. We need stabilizers during storms. Who are my stabilizers, I reflected.
And here’s another piece of what I’ve been learning: A stabilizer is different from a medicator.
When the waters get rough, our instinct may be to numb ourselves. We distract. Drink. Scroll. Stay busy. Entertain ourselves. Work harder. Find anything that will help us forget for a while that the ship is moving through deep waters and rough waves. Numbing may temporarily change what we feel. It doesn’t change the waves. Stabilizers do something different. They help us remain present while the waves are still there.They don’t rescue us from the experience. Instead, stabilizers help us move through the storms. A good stabilizer doesn’t promise to make the storm disappear. It holds fast on either side and travels through with us.
Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts we can give another person. Saying, I’m not going to pretend this isn’t hard. I’m not going to tell you how to make it disappear. I’m going to stay steady beside you while we move through it – together.
Also, remember where you’re going.
In the middle of a storm, it is easy to make the storm the whole story. It isn’t. The storm is part of the journey. It isn’t the destination. It feels huge and dangerous and maybe even lonely. It is. Truth is, I’ve been through storms before. Truth is, you may have too. Maybe you are now?
The truth is we were still headed toward Reykjavik in the middle of this storm. And sometimes when life feels wildly out of our control, we need to remember where we’re headed too. We need to ask ourselves in the middle of it, What matters to me? Who do I want to be when I get through this? What am I moving toward? What is still true, even here?
We may not be able to control the winds or waves, but we can stay oriented toward where we’re going. And eventually, the storm passes in some way, even when we are left tired, uneasy, or tense. Just because the storms pass doesn’t mean there won’t be damage. There may be things to assess when the waters settle. Things to repair. Conversations to have. Grief to process. Decisions to make. The storm is just part of the story. We can’t stay there.
Which is another reason rest matters in the storm. Sometimes resting isn’t avoiding the work. It’s preparing ourselves for the work that comes afterward. All of this reminded me of something I know but easily forget: We don’t get to choose every sea we travel. We don’t control the wind. We don’t control the waves. And we certainly can’t lasso them into submission. But we can pay attention to our posture. We can choose our position. We can be intentional about our view. We can trust wise captains. We can remember where we’re going. And we can know who and what stabilizes us.
Better yet, we can build those stabilizers in calmer waters, before the storm ever comes. Because eventually, for all of us, the winds pick up. The question isn’t whether we can stop them. The question is what and who will help us remain steady enough to keep moving through them.
Find your stabilizers. And when someone you love finds themselves in rough waters, perhaps become one for them.
April Bordeau, is Care to Change’s Founder and Managing Director