Some people ask God (or the universe) for a “word” in the new year – some anchoring idea to govern their steps or guide their decisions toward a better future. I didn’t ask for this one, but this year God gave me an image: dancing in the eye of a tornado.

It started with a nonchalant conversation with my husband on the way to church one commonplace Sunday. He could tell I was stressed! He, quite intuitively, asked me to wrap some descriptive vocabulary around what I was feeling that week. Did it feel like drowning… sinking slowly into the depths? No, that wasn’t it. Was I buried – stifled and suppressed by the burdens pressing in on me? No, that wasn’t right either.

I felt I was confronting some type of catastrophe… some natural disaster… not un-natural, but no less overwhelming. Then it came to me, in the middle of our liturgy. I was dancing in the eye of a tornado. The world was swirling around me, a constant and chaotic swarm of options, needs, and possibilities. But with the chaos came a sense of calm. If I could stay in the eye of the storm, and move seamlessly with the erratic motions of my life, I could still be okay. I could be where I belong.

This image has walked with me for several weeks now. It has comforted me in chaotic moments and even empowered me toward decisions I might not otherwise have made.

Above all, it has given me a hope towards which I aspire. I am a tornado-dancer. I move seamlessly in rhythm with the storm around me. I do it because… I must. If I step out of sync with the chaos around me, I will falter and might instantaneously get sucked into the swam and lose all I have become.

And yet… incredibly… there is an incomprehensible peace when I am anchored in the ever-changing eye of the storm. As long as I move in the rhythms to which God ordained for me – as long as I listen relentlessly to His voice when He tells me to move, and tells me to wait, and tells me to bend without breaking – I feel utterly and indescribably calm.

This is a new era for me. I have learned how to trust Him when things are good. I have learned how to lean on Him in times of true suffering. I have learned to believe in Him for hope of the future. I have learned to walk with Him for momentary guidance. But I have never danced with Him among the chaos, the way we are dancing together now.

I feel real stakes on the line here. If I make a wrong move, there will be consequences. He won’t love me less or leave me abandoned… but there will be consequences. He is teaching me a new rhythm. But more than any fear of faltering, I feel an intense sense of opportunity. What if I could learn to dance among storms, through the guidance of my Savior and Friend? What if this is how He’s wanted me to be living all along? What if peace doesn’t, necessarily, equal peacefulness?

I am a storm-dancer. So I will dance. And will learn what it means to BE right where I’m supposed to be.