This blog post was written by my friend Christy McIntyre. She shared her thoughts with me one day while walking and they resonated. I hope it encourages you too.

Christy has been a teacher in 3 countries, Director of Training for Totalfit, and married to her best friend for 23 years. She is currently launching her two kids into adulthood, loving Jesus, and trying to find the next iteration of life God has for her, probably on the other side of the planet. Meanwhile, she writes observations and God-given notes in her phone that hopefully won’t break before she puts them all in a book.

I love her perspective on life and her teaching spirit. Enjoy!

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When exactly did the lie begin? You know the lie, that being a grown-up was a straight path, predictable, and for the most part, planned.

We, well at least I, grew up antsy to become an adult and couldn’t wait to be out there doing all the adult things. For some reason, watching our moms and dads do the mundane seemed extraordinary. Seemed effortless. Seemed, like a straight line on a smooth road. Did they just not tell us about the bumps along the way or storms that popped up out of nowhere? Were they better at navigating the bumps, the curves, or even the quick hard left turns that life seems to throw at us regularly?

Hope and Help

Despite the answer, the truth is, adult life is just a series of storms. Unfortunately, we can’t watch the “adult life weather report” because there is no meteorologist for each of our lives predicting the sunshine, clouds, torrential rain or damaging winds on the horizon.

But just like the actual weather, life storms will come and nothing can be done to stop them. What if instead of trying to avoid the storms we looked around for hope and help, like umbrellas on a rainy day?

Umbrellas are everywhere, useful, and can even change the course of our day especially if we don’t have to get totally drenched in a pop-up storm. The people we choose as friends, work partners, and even our community are just like those umbrellas. They impact our emotional state in ways we can’t fathom.

Relief and Calm

The relief and calm they bring help shift our perspective, offer good advice, bring humor to situations, and make moments of joy and hope that are the sunshine and fair weather that help us carry on. Friends will often sit with us in hard times offering wisdom beyond our capacity or a place of calm to process the crazy.

Long gone are the days of umbrella holders right inside the entry to homes and businesses, but what if we look at our collection of friends and memories as just that? A collection of umbrellas that help us to endure a storm and steady us in the rain.

This week look for the umbrellas. It could be a moment of joy or a friend. Go be an umbrella when you see a storm approaching someone you love.

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity,” (Proverbs 17:17 NIV).

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