THERE’S A STORM OUT THERE

By Yolanda Huddleston, Washington, D.C.

                “There’s a storm out on the ocean and it’s moving this ol’ way, if your soul’s not anchored in Jesus, you will surely drift away---“.   I was humming this old gospel hymn as I looked out the window of my jail cell---and drift away I did when the first major storm came into my life in 1980.  The storm involved my mother who found out she was dying from breast cancer and only had a few years to live.  In 1977, at the age of 19, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  I went to church every Sunday.  But because I partied and smoked weed the rest of the week, my soul was not anchored, and when the 1980 storm came I started drifting.

                I had no one that really loved me except my mother, grandmother and my little boy.  I watched my mother suffer from the pain that racked her body and my soul was racked with the paid of helplessness because there was nothing I could do to save her.  I didn’t understand how God operated, nor did I understand my grandmother’s calm when she said, “There’s a time to be born and a time to die.”  (Ecclesiastes 3:2).  I was angry---the storm was out and I was drifting.

                A friend of mine introduced me to heroin and heroin became my best friend.  It helped soothe the pain that became so unbearable.  By the time my mother died in 1984, I was a full-fledged junkie.  My addiction took me places I thought I’d never go.  I did everything I thought was big and bad enough to do.  I ended up in jail in 1985 on a distribution drug charge.  I got caught while juggling on the streets of Washington, DC.  Since then I’ve been in and out on different violations.

                In 1997, I was arrested at my apartment in Sacramento, CA on an escape charge from a halfway house in 1995.  I had left the halfway house after learning that the staff was about to send me back to jail because of my drug usage—I had relapsed once again.  Several months after being arrested, I was admitted to the Orange County Mental Hospital for detoxification.  I desperately needed Jesus to speak to the storm that had been in my life for the past 15 years.  Then He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea; Peace, be still.  And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.  Mark 4:39.               There came a great calm in my life.  I had 3 ½ years of sobriety and I was anchored in Jesus.  

                Another storm came through in 1998---the death of my grandmother whose funeral I could not attend as it was out of state and my 23 year old son moved away and no one knows his whereabouts---but I’m holding on to God’s unchanging hand and I’m standing on His Word and His promises:  For He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee  (Heb. 13:5).  Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Ps. 30:5).  All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28).

                After 16 months of incarceration I was again paroled and placed in a halfway house.  Praise God!  As Christians we are going to have trials and tribulations, many due to our own sins.  But if we hold on to God’s unchanging hand, we can ask Him to speak to the storms in our lives.