Finding Grace in the Storm
By Megan Ackerson
Not my will, but Yours be done.
Luke 22:42
For weeks my husband and I have been on the outs. Not in some dramatic, marriage-ending sort of way, but in the quiet kind of way that slowly wears two people down. The kind where every little thing gets under your skin and even simple conversations feel heavy.
It usually starts with his insomnia.
I want him to come to bed with me so we can wake up early and tackle our never-ending to-do list together. But night after night he stays up. I make suggestions to help him sleep. He brushes them off. Frustration builds. Tempers rise. Before long we are arguing over things that are not really about sleep at all.
What bothers me most is not even the lack of sleep. It is how unlike himself he becomes when he has gone too long without rest.
He gets short-tempered and moody. He snaps at me, the animals, sometimes at nothing at all. The man who is usually patient and level-headed suddenly seems irritated by everything around him, most of all me. Some days it seems he doesn’t even like me. After enough restless nights, I begin to feel lonely in my own home.
I miss the version of him that shows up without being asked.
The man who teaches instead of walking away frustrated.
The man who stays calm in difficult situations.
The man I fell in love with.
When insomnia takes hold, that man can feel very far away.
Did I pray about it? Of course I did.
But if I am honest, my prayers often sounded more like me handing God a list of complaints.
Help him sleep.
Help him be kinder.
Help him stop snapping at everyone.
Help me deal with all of this.
And for a while, it felt like nothing was changing.
When he slept well, life felt lighter. We laughed more. Worked better together. But after another sleepless night, it seemed like we were right back where we started. Nothing I did helped. Most of the time my attempts only made things worse. The two of us were too stubborn and prideful to find our way out of the cycle we had fallen into.
Then the other day we took a little road trip.
Nothing extraordinary. Just hours together in the car with highway noise humming in the background and conversation filling the space between us.
Somewhere during that drive, we started talking the way we used to. About everything and nothing at the same time. My husband shared stories — some I had heard before and others I had not. And as I listened, something inside me shifted.
For the first time in weeks, I could see my husband again.
Not just the sleeplessness.
Not just the tension that had settled into our house.
Not just the ways we had both been hurting each other.
I could see him.
I realized I had become so focused on his sleeping — or rather his not sleeping — and the problems it was causing in our marriage that my vision of him had become clouded.
Ask me the week before and I probably would have struggled to say something kind about him. I had become hyper-focused on how he was making me feel. How his moods affected my day. How his struggles were creating problems in my life.
Even my prayers centered around my own discomfort.
But sitting there beside him in that car, hearing him laugh and tell stories, I realized something important:
God had been answering my prayers all along.
Just not in the way I expected.
I wanted God to change my husband.
Instead, God was changing my heart.
He was softening me enough to see beyond the tension and remember who this man truly was.
As I listened to him talk, I remembered that this man beside me had survived difficult seasons before. He had weathered hard winters, lean times, disappointments, losses, and battles I cannot fully understand. And somehow, every single time, he rose above them.
That is his strength.
My husband often jokes that he is nothing more than another one of my farm animals. But in that moment, I could see the quiet grace within him — the part of him hardship had never managed to take away.
I could see the spirit living within him.
And somewhere between the traffic, old stories, and familiar laughter, I realized the man I thought I had lost had been there all along. I had simply allowed my hurt and frustration to become louder than my ability to truly see him.
Prayer did not instantly heal my husband’s insomnia.
But it healed something in me.
It reminded me that love cannot survive if we only look at each other through the lens of our grievances. Sometimes the miracle is not that God removes the struggle. Sometimes the miracle is that He restores our ability to see one another with compassion again.
I think that is where many of us misunderstand prayer. We approach God hoping for a transaction, bringing Him a list of problems we want solved and people we want changed. But prayer often works much deeper than that. Sometimes the circumstances do not change. The diagnosis still comes. Some people still lose their homes despite working hard. Some children still suffer things no child ever should. Life can remain painfully unfair and heartbreakingly heavy. Prayer is not a promise that suffering will disappear or that life will suddenly become easy. It is an invitation to draw near to God within it. And sometimes, while we are asking Him to change our circumstances, He is quietly transforming the way we see, love, endure, forgive, and carry one another through them. Sometimes the miracle is not deliverance from the storm, but discovering that God is still shaping our hearts as we walk through it.
Closing Prayer
Lord,
Teach us to love each other with grace during difficult seasons. When frustration clouds our vision and hurt hardens our hearts, help us to see one another the way You do. Remind us that the people we love are more than their worst moments, their struggles, or the burdens they carry.
Help us to stop approaching prayer as a transaction, expecting quick answers and easy solutions. Instead, teach us to sit with You long enough to be transformed by Your presence. Soften what has become bitter within us. Humble what has become prideful. Restore compassion where resentment has taken root.
And when the storms of life do not immediately pass, give us the strength to walk through them with patience, mercy, and enduring love. Remind us that even in the hardest seasons, You are still working quietly within our hearts, shaping us into people who love more deeply, forgive more freely, and carry one another with gentleness.
Amen.
Reflections
Have I become so focused on someone’s struggles or shortcomings that I have stopped truly seeing the person beneath them?
Reflections
When I pray about difficult relationships, am I only asking God to change the other person, or am I willing to let Him change me too?
Reflections
What emotions have quietly taken root in my heart during this season — resentment, pride, bitterness, impatience, loneliness — and how might they be shaping the way I see others?