Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” John 20:21
We had that white stuff falling from the sky again yesterday. You know, the cold stuff that’s supposed to be gone by now and replaced with sunshine. I wracked my brain trying to come up with a good reason not to be annoyed. Aha! I was reaching but found it. The cicadas. My heart did a little tap-dance in my chest when I saw that this was the spring they’ll emerge after their last party seventeen years ago. The cold temperature was keeping them away a little longer.
Hate is too strong of a word to use for cicadas. They’re just out there doing their thing unlike the ticks that I’d like to see decimated. A small, personal opinion. I do hold a teensy grudge from their last bash. They were only out for a good time and being completely harmless when things got a bit out of control.
The swarm of noisy partiers decided to move into our yard. I acknowledge they didn’t intentionally set out to make me nuts but the chaos that ensued left a lasting impression. They were buzzing around, enthusiastically greeting one another without a care in the world. The level of excitement made things quite noisy. If you’ve never experienced one of their get-togethers, just picture Black Friday right as a store opens that has the best deals with the most amazing items.
I made the mistake of trying to get to my front door in the midst of the madness. The thing is, I was huge, they were not. I was waddling up the sidewalk with my big belly leading and one of those overly energetic bugs crashed right into me. The rest are jabbering away all around me and I’m in crisis mode. Not that it was overly painful, but it went right down my shirt.
Who was more surprised and damaged by the incident? I’m not sure, but I do know that it was trapped. Inside. My. Shirt. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in there to maneuver, and it was too noisy for me to think. In the midst of my dilemma, I did have the grand revelation that it needed to get out! The only way I could think of freeing it was to get the barrier off between it and God’s world.
With my hubby’s mouth hanging open, that’s just what I did. I didn’t think it through; I instinctively needed to provide some self-preservation. I didn’t have time to go through all the pros and cons when I knew that if I dealt with it much longer, the crisis would create a catastrophic meltdown from this very pregnant lady. Thank God we didn’t live in the city and there weren’t any airplanes flying overhead.
Later that night, one of them decided to bring the party into the house. It was jamming out to its own song, when my hubby saw something that must’ve frightened him. I believe my eyes got huge while darting from one corner of the room to the other. He recognized that it would be in his best interest to find and escort the intruder out of our home, maybe for his self-preservation.
What did I learn? When in the midst of a crisis, don’t ignore my own well-being. If I did that day, the cicada could’ve died in there and I could’ve dropped from exhaustion or had a panic attack by the time everything was dealt with. That wouldn’t have helped the situation. What if my hubby didn’t understand what was going on? I’d have stayed in crisis mode while dragging him right in there with me.
This is a bit of a silly (even though true) story to recognize a very serious issue. We all face times of crisis in our lives, and it’s better to know how we’re going to handle them before they come along. When we don’t give ourselves a break from a crisis, we will break from it.
Have you tried to play superman or superwoman while in crisis mode? How did that work out for you? Were you the one who needed treatment at the end of it all? How were your other relationships by then? Were you exhausted and snapping but refusing to step outside of the crisis for a moment? Don’t play the martyr as it’s referred to these days (a self-imposed victim or self-possessed champion) because it takes God out of the crisis. Isn’t that who we want smack-dab in the center?
Take a second to throw your shirt up…oh whoa…uh yeah…that didn’t come out right. Let’s try that again. Take a breather during a crisis to receive that peace from Jesus. As God sent Jesus, He knows just where to send us to maximize our effectiveness. That one decision to let Him send us will provide the exact prescription needed in the crisis we face.
Maybe before I went rushing into the swarm of cicadas, if I’d have prepared better, I wouldn’t have contributed to the chaos. I’d have the instructions to bring peace through the entire trip from the beginning to the destination without trapping others along the way. At least, I took that moment to deal with my own issue before continuing on.
I challenge you to take time out for a consultation from the One who can better prepare you to face the chaos in peace, while increasing your effectiveness. Won’t that allow you to lift others instead of being drug into the chaos? When that peace starts slipping, it doesn’t mean to keep going as you are, it means to get back to the Peacemaker. Let God define the best way for you to contribute during a crisis. I know it will be peace instead of more chaos.
Remember to give yourself a break from a crisis, so you don’t break from it.
