Stormy weather by Bashment

A friend e-mailed this to share it with me and I thought I would share it with others as well. Read enjoy and be strengthened.

By VANESSA C. ROLLE, Guardian Lifestyles Editor

The first time I went to Jamaica I cried. I was green, 19 and had been out of The Bahamas only once before that.

I remember seeing the Blue Mountains that night on the way from the airport, marvelling at its beauty and wondering how could any mountain be blue.

When we drove on that street again the next morning, the same Blue Mountains were green with forestation. I have never even seen a mountain before in my life and my heart grew so full because of its intricate features beauty and splendor. I remember thinking to myself, "and people have a nerve to say there is no God." But the Bible calls them fools.

On that same trip, I saw a river for the first time in my life and then there was Dunns River Falls - the waterfall that people can actually climb and reach the top and Fern Gully, where the ferns stretched into a natural canopy for miles across the busy street. Who else but God could create something like this? There had to be a power greater than the sun, wind and the earth. There had to be a power greater than man that created them all.

Mine was not an ordinary childhood, for I was always very conscious of God. I remember going to my window each night to talk to God - thanking Him for putting up a few stars just for me to see.

The next night I would return to that very window and see millions of them...and the next night, He gave me a nice full moon. When I went to bed, it seemed as if He would lay right beside me all night to keep me safe from harm.

My real father was not around for my sister and I and so I learned early in my life that God was my real Father. I had to believe in Him. He was all I had. My mother reminded my siblings and I of that everyday because my biological father was absent. It was only us and the good Lord that got through the rough times when we had to carry a one pound bag filled with 200 one cent coins to school to buy lunch. It was Mommy, us and the good Lord, who got through the times when we had to wear our busted shoes (even in the rain) until she got enough money to buy us a new pair. It was Mommy, us and the good Lord that endured the nights of fire engine and the big pot of rice that had to last for couple of days at least. It was God that kept my Mother going when she had to work two jobs and was too tired to even play or talk to us sometimes. (But she still made the time.) My mother always told us that if we trusted in God, we would make it......we wouldn't have any other choice.

God was just a prayer away and God as my witness, He always came through for me. He never disappointed me and He always showed up right on time. Everytime I think about it, it's hard to fathom exactly why He loves me and why He always went out of His way just for me....like a real parent should. I failed Him many times and I wanted to do my own thing, go my own way only to one day come to the realisation that I am nothing without Him. I remember going back to Him, penitent, ashamed, wounded and He healed my broken spirit. Why He always reached out for me, I'll never know or understand. It always seemed like His right hand juts out to catch you before you hit the bottom. Then there are times when you think that you have reached the bottom and He just does something to show you that you're still in that hand. You can peek over His fingers and see that the bottom is quite a distance away.

When I was five years old, He came to me as I was laying on the floor of my grandmother's room. At that moment I recognised that I was a sinner and I remember crying uncontrollably " I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

There was nothing that my grandmother could do to calm me down and I was so full that I could not even respond to her when she asked me what was wrong or if something was hurting, or if someone had hurt me. I knew even then that there was no way in this world that she would take a five-year-old seriously about something as deep as that. I was so full of passion.

I could not speak but the feeling was so real. God is so real. There was just something deep in my heart that He just took for His own that night and is still keeping me today.

About two years ago when the doctors told me that my mother was going to die, I never accepted that. I walked away and left my mother and the doctor right there in the hospital ward, with what I considered "foolish talk." I knew that God would have the final say and so I prayed and argued with Him, questioned what He was doing and begged Him to "hurry up, come and fix this"...because this could not be happening. That entire day, God sent me the same message over and over again.

It was entire chapter of Psalm 27 and in particular the last verse that read: "Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait I say on the Lord." And I waited. With my Bible turned to that passage, I placed it under my mother's pillow. She remembers nothing about her illness at that time but she's alive today to hear the story.

I've been on this earth for 30 years and I can tell you that I have never been more sure of anything in my whole life: God is real.

In Isaiah 45:21 and 22 the Lord says, " And there is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Saviour; there is none besides Me. Look to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God and there is no other."