The wind howls outside as it’s done all day.
I am weary of it.
It bears down hard as I step out the backdoor, my arms laden with bags and boxes.
I wave at my nieces as I deliver supper to the wheat field. I greet them and tell them I feel quite complainy about the never-ending wind. They agree.
My daughter climbs down the steps shoving the navy Peterbilt door shut behind her. I hand her a styrofoam box filled with pork, potatoes, and parmesan vegetables.
She grips it tightly, shielding it from the wind that tugs wildly at it.

My truck trundles on, trudging along the sand roads, laboring against the unseen elements.
Questions brainstorm inside my head much as the wind whips around my house.
I am weary of them too.
Even more weary of pat answers and cliqued Christianese.
I roll to a halt. My right tires edge into the ditch.
The tractor rumbles nearer, fresh dirt falling, turning, furrowing from the cultivator shanks.
My good farmer man wrenches the door open. Dirt streaks his face and gathers in the creases and corners of his eyes.
The wind buffets and billows, harder than ever.
The tractor AC has given up the ghost turning this into hot, stuffy, dirty work.
We crank the pickup’s ac and he rummages in the cooler-in-residence on the flatbed; pops open a cold bottled drink.
I watch the wild wind and I capture one of my wildly soaring thoughts.
Isn’t the spirit of God likened to the wind? Neither are visible. Neither are completely understandable. Both are powerful.
Much as I’m wont to want the wind to settle, I’m wont to wonder where the spirit is in my life. We Christians seem compelled to constantly ask Christ to fill us with the spirit. We have songs with invitations for the spirit to fill the place. We seem unsure of His presence.

And I think maybe we’ve missed it.
We don’t have to thrash about. We don’t have to worry or wonder why we don’t “feel” it.
On the days we wonder where God is, the hours we’re sure He can’t love us, the dark nights of the soul, the silence of God, the moments when waves of despair crash in and peace rolls away with the tide, the anguished aching angst when our souls howl for someone to simply sit with us, the spirit of Christ Jesus, the one gifted to us when we became a child of God, the one we are sealed with, she sits there welcoming our humanity, embracing our frailty, brushing back our hair, offering Kleenex to our hiccupping heaving sobs.
The Spirit never needs to be invited in. She is the magnificent, abundant, glorious gift imbued to us who believe. We are ones in whom Christ dwells and delights. We may despair but we are not given to despair. We may grieve but the Holy Spirit is not grieved with us. We may be unsettled but the Spirit is never shaken from us.
Peter tells us right there in Acts the Spirit is given to us as a gift. And over in Ephesians words run like this, God identified you as his own and gave you the Spirit as you believed in Christ.
We do not have a gloomy God. We have a God who delights in giving his children good gifts.
A comforter.
And when do we find that we most need a comforter?
We most need a comforter in the wind-whipped days, in the unanswered questions, in the frustrations with faith. We most need a comforter when we have fallen, when we feel forsaken, when all that is fragile in us, turns on us, and furiously announces us a failure.
The spirit won’t shame us. Won’t shut us down. Won’t stop us from searching for understanding.
She’ll wail right along with us. Intercede for us when we have no words left; no idea of what to even ask.
If we flip open to Romans 8, right there in black ink on paper-thin pages, verses 26 and 28, we find this:
“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”
Perhaps, this is the phenomenon of faith. Offering open palms. Accepting that I don’t know. I don’t have it all together. I don’t need to have it all together. The how and what are not “good Christian” requirements.
Perhaps, the phenomenon of faith realizes it’s ok to wander in the wilderness. To lay down the demand for easy answers is to let the Spirit lead. Maybe that’s the lesson of the wilderness.
Perhaps the phenomenon of faith is the slow dawning, the dim recognition that we aren’t created for a purpose. We, our flesh-and-blood, walking-around-and-talking, living-breathing, human-embodied souls, we, ARE the purpose. We are God-breathed, God-thought, God-designed. We are made on purpose because God wanted to delight in us and dwell with us.
It is mystery. There’s so much I can’t explain nor do I understand.
But this I believe.
The Holy Spirit dwells.
Dwelling does not involve daring deeds on the daily. Dwelling does not flap frantically forward. Dwelling is not blown about by every silly scheme.
To dwell is to abide. To abide is to be present with. To be present with is to be aware of.
When hardships hit, and they will, when depression stands present, and he will, when all that is beautiful has burnt into ashes, when the wind simply will not quit, when dreams die and what once was marvelous is mutinously mundane, when our once sure-steadiness is shaken, friend, hear me.
There is a comforter near and dear, there is a spirit-gift dwelling inside of you, you are held.
I’m pulled back to the present as dirt billows in the distance. The styrofoam square is empty and the good farmer really needs his beverage refreshed. He finds more water as I gather up the trash. He gathers his phone and his jug; prepares to return to the stifling tractor cab. I find the lever to adjust my seat; prepare to push through the wind and return to our home.
Once back, I hustle all the bags and boxes up the sidewalk. Tuck my flyaway hair behind my ears as the welcome walls shield us from the gusts. I swap out laundry; search for lids to seal up leftovers.
The air conditioner hums steadily but it doesn’t obscure the shriek of wind around windows and eaves.
I sink onto the couch and find my Google docs. I begin to type.
I’m frustrated with to-dos and checklists and here-let-me-hand-you-this-tidy-six-step-plan-for-purpose-filled living.
I find I continue to have more questions than answers. More frustrations with faith. More to wrestle with.
But in the underlying spaces as I seek to know his grace, I continually find a simplicity of soul and spirit stitched together with silky strands by outstretched hands and a superseding love that spans the spreading schisms of skepticism.
I find it harder to write. More challenging because I’m not quite sure where my beliefs line up anymore.
People don’t like this. Christians don’t like this.
We don’t sit with uncertainties or offer open spaces for unsettledness.
We don’t like being challenged to confront belief systems and interpretations handed down to us.
Prescriptive answers don’t help me anymore.
Cut-and-dried cuts to the core and ignores my humanity.
Coming face-to-face with the myriad of fear and judgment much of Christianity uses to wield power is very unnerving.
The boxes and places we like to put people in. The us versus them mentality we seem to embrace as gospel which is completely antithetical to the actual gospel.
I pick up my pen because I am curious. What words might come? I wonder what it is I wish someone would offer me in this place of in-between.
Can I wrestle here among sentences and asterisks and find a hint of what I long to hear? Am I able to write words to give a nod of understanding?
There is always the slight chance I am the outlier. Maybe I am the only one who has ever asked why God feels so silent in my life. Yet, I find it doubtful.
For I have lived this human experience long enough to know we are never the only one with doubts, never the only one with hurts, never the only one to cry out into the impenetrable chasm.
Here is what I do know.
Friend, we aren’t always going to feel it.
We aren’t less loved by God if we wonder why or ask how.
We aren’t suddenly no longer spirit-filled.
I do not believe this to be the nature of God.
He does not cat-and-mouse us.
It may feel like it. I won’t argue that.
He seems silent. Seems hide-and-seekish.
I can’t explain why.
But I’m learning to be ok with that.
Learning to believe this is part of the process.
I don’t write prescriptive answers. But I do try to write peace and presence that will sit with someone in their problems.
I will encourage you to pay attention to your intuition, innate deep knowing, and sense of where the spirit is nudging you.
I won’t tell you to pray harder.
I won’t tell you to ask for the spirit. The spirit dwells in you, with you.
The spirit is in every treasured breath your lungs inhale and exhale.
I will tell you this.
Your experience will enable you to come alongside someone else in their questions and simply sit and offer presence and peace without pressure.
I wish I had a tidy answer. I don’t.
No one does.
I would hazard that those who say they do have yet to encounter this stage of faith, of growth. They haven’t loosened their tight fists; instead they clutch them close.
Having all the answers? Honestly? It’s control in a cloak.
Waiting and withness? They are compassion cloaked in humility.
Humility grows in hard places.
Humility recognizes the reality of raw and vulnerable queries.
Humility comes quietly in hiddenness.
Humility has a listening ear.
Humility lays down manipulation and misinterpretation.
Humility is open to heartbreak and soulaches.
Humility’s basket brims with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The wind soars inside as the back door bangs open. I know not whither it comes from or whither it’s going. I long for it to calm.
Yet, I can’t miss the analogy. Maybe this soulstorm simply means the spirit is on the move, stirring, steadying, preparing for a new thing.
Maybe there is breath in the in-between.
I question our propensity to pull Scriptures out-of-context, yet I find these passages so beautiful, so poetic, so full of promise.
Maybe even as we grow and learn, as we read more fully into context and history, we can also hold beautiful words near and dear, a lifeline in the blustery days, a nod that our God treasures poetic comfort.
Isaiah 43:16-21
“This is what God says, the God who builds a road right through the ocean, who carves a path through pounding waves,
The God who summons horses and chariots and armies—they lie down and then can’t get up; they’re snuffed out like so many candles:
“Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.
It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands.
Wild animals will say ‘Thank you!’
—the coyotes and the buzzards—
Because I provided water in the desert,rivers through the sunbaked earth,
Drinking water for the people I chose,
the people I made especially for myself, a people custom-made to praise me.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-5
“All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Good Resources to companion you, to offer presence without pressure.
- On Getting Out of Bed by Alan Noble
- Walking With Henry by Rachel Anne Ridge
- The Critical Journey by Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A, Guelich
- Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas
- After Doubt by A. J. Swoboda
- The Next Right Thing by Emily P. Freeman
- Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor


