And I feel your fists, and I know it's out of love.

When I was in middle school, I was required to read the book The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. For anyone who is unaware, The Hiding Place is a true account of imprisonment during the Holocaust. When my mother found out that it was assigned reading, she exclaimed, "Oh! I had to read that! The part about the fleas is so powerful!"

"The part about the fleas" is the only part of The Hiding Place that I remember. I believe it was Corrie and her sister, imprisoned in one of the Nazi camps, were praying. One remembered that the Bible said to give thanks to God in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18!), and so they gave thanks for the fleas that infested their barracks. One thought that was an insane idea, giving thanks for the fleas, but then it so happened that the fleas kept the guards from spending too much time in the barracks, so they were able to hold group prayer services without the guards knowing and stopping them.

When we encounter storms in our lives, how radical would it be for us to thank God for them?

The youth conferences at Montreat this summer are themed "In These Waters", and every Tuesday is (well, was, now) "storm day", where they talk about when the waters get rough and how to deal with that. There's a lot about voicing your anger to God, lots of citing the books of Lamentations and Job, and two of my favorite Psalms: 22 and 130. I've found them to be very skillfully handled all around, and believe they have been giving very important messages to youth, specifically that your emotions are valid and that there are ways to release emotions without hurting yourself or others.

A major storm hit in my life on Monday, a storm that may cause me to lose the most precious thing it is possible for me to lose. I have pulled on all the lessons on how to deal with uncertainty and grief that I have ever learned in my life. I have screamed at God, I have tried to run from God, I have wept at God's feet. I have cycled through various stages of the Kübler-Ross model. I have fought the situation (am still fighting), I have distracted myself, I have reread Job and Medea and relistened to the entirety of Diamanda Galas' Plague Mass. I've eaten many Cheerwine-filled donuts and sat on porches with friends and cried myself to sleep several nights in a row and sent desperate emails and made phone calls and Google searched and written Latin on my arms and been really difficult to console and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed. The situation has not resolved and that's causing a huge physical strain including irregular breathing, loss of appetite, and back pain. The resolution keeps moving farther and farther away, too, which is simply maddening. Been trying to stay as healthy as I possibly can.

So yesterday, after another day of this, (in fact after listening to Diamanda Galas) I stopped and said, "Thank you."

Thank you, God. I don't know why this is happening but thank you.

And you know what? It started to feel better.

Not in that "everything will turn out the way I want it to!" way, but somehow it gave me a grasp on the situation and a lot of the physical effects, at least, lessen when I say "Thank you." Even if I'm saying it through clenched teeth, as long as I try to mean it, to say it without sarcasm or irony.

I'd gotten to a pretty good place yesterday and then work was maddening and threw me off again. But I know it can be there, and I am now curious about the spiritual discipline of saying, "Thank you."

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Because even when our lives seem broken beyond imagining, we are blessed beyond measure.