The Lord on High is Mightier

for sw, my safest person

The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, than the mighty waves of the sea.

Psalm 93:3-4, NKJV

I watched the helicopter rise from the hospital helipad, each thunderous throb of its propellers coursing through my body like a terrible shockwave.

We were sitting in a beautiful garden outside the hospital while our son slept on the tenth floor. The sun shone warmly and a magnificent hydrangea bush nodded in the gentle breeze beside us.

But I was not present.

I was in the dark, standing on a lonely platform looking up into the night sky seven months earlier when I had watched my son and husband disappear into the dark, carried away in an emergency helicopter while I stood helplessly by, gripped by shock and fear for my son’s life.

My face broke into a grimace of pain as the tears dripped from my chin. I felt vaguely embarrassed, even though I sat with the safest person in my life, my husband. But even he could not understand how it had felt to watch him that fateful night, face grim and drawn with worry, as he accompanied our boy on the most critical flight of his life.

As the pain and fear rose up like a flood in my heart and in my body, I took myself in hand and recited what is true right now: We are safe. Our son is safe. He survived. He just had a successful surgery to help him walk even better. He will recover. He was laughing with you this morning. 

The problem with trauma is it deeply imprints our minds, emotions, and bodies. And in the case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), all those feelings resurface at unexpected moments. The sound of a helicopter, the sight of its life-giving spin through the air as heroes inside fight for the life of another, all send me straight back to the night of terror our family survived. 

Many don’t survive. Some mothers look up at the sound of a helicopter and are reminded of the gaping hole in their lives left after the loss of a beloved son or daughter. 

The flood of anguish rises, and rises, and rises again. The noise of the waters deafens our hope; the waves reach our throats and we gulp against the suffocating darkness. It is in that instant a watch-word flashes from heaven like lightening in the torrent: The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, than the mighty waves of the sea.

No matter your sorrow, your fear, your loss, there is One mightier than the raging around you and in you. 

The Lord on high is a rock, and He is the God of heaven and earth. He is a refuge for those who trust in Him.

I have not figured out how to remove the pain, to stop the rise of the flood, even on a day sitting in a garden in the sunshine. Fear and sorrow come without warning sometimes, like thieves intent on stealing our hard-earned peace. They take us back to a place we don’t want to return. To feelings we may have been unable to express at the moment of trauma.

It sounds like torment, but perhaps in God’s divine mercy, #PTSD is actually a gift. Seems to me that we need to feel the pain in order to surrender it. #hope #mentalhealth Share on X

We do not often have a choice in how pain comes to our lives. But we do have a choice in what we do with it. Whatever our suffering, we can surrender our pain to the Lord. 

I felt the agony today. But I surrendered it, and that is what matters. For the Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, than the mighty waves of the sea. I’m walking on from this floodplain to higher ground. Join me?

Lord, I want to hold on to my pain, to wallow in it, to let it choke me sometimes. Help me surrender it to You. For you are higher than its raging noise, the waves that threaten to overtake me. Amen.

@audreycfrank