The Blessing of Storms
The Blessing of Storms.. is in the Storm.
We all have been there, huddled in the corner or under a bed as an approaching storm grows louder outside our door.
Or as the siren in the football field shifts our attention from spelling words to an awareness that a tornado is heading our direction and we need to get into our duck and cover position lined up like little turtles in the hallways.
Growing up in the Midwest, tornados were a part of life. The words Tornado Watch seemed to flash daily in the upper right corner of the TV as summer vacation came to an end. As kids, we had grown blind to the words that crossed the TV screed during Scooby Doo.
Eventual there would be a moment when the warning siren would blast and my mom when huddling us all together in the basement with the green portable radio. I would silent whisper “make it go away, God. Please, just make it go away.” Numb with fear I could think of nothing else to do but pray way the storm and wait.
As I grew older life ’s storms took on a different hue. The storms of my adult became Life Storms. Those Life Storms of popularity, and success and money and eventually kids.
I tried to duck and cover and pray away the raging self-doubts of school, carrier, and marriage that filled me over and over. Hoping this storms too would pass…soon. As the tempest of “what if’s” battered at my confidence and faith. I would find myself back in a duck and cover type position praying for it all to go away. Wanting only to hear and all clear so that I could go back to living life like it was before the storm.
VBS had been taught that me a rainbow was a promise from God that every storm would end.
But in the midst of Life Storms of sick kids, failed businesses, past due bills, silent date nights, yo-yo diets and incomplete dreams. The promise of a rainbows seemed to fair away to hope for. I needed comfort in the storm,NOW. I needed to learn how to stand in the storm and keep moving forward. The duck and cover of grade school would not get me where I needed to go and proved useless against Life Storms.
I had to learn to see the beauty and the blessing of the storm in the storm
The late summer evenings safe on mamaw’s porch swing watching the night sky blaze with the lighting of an approaching storm as we counted one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi taught me to see the beauty and excitement of natures storms. It was from that front porch I was taught Nature uses storms clear away the weak and decayed. Natures storms to wash clean the old and dusty roads long untraveled. Natures uses storms to renew the dying earth and clear the air of hot summer days staleness.
Life storms do the same if we allow them. Life storms require us to hold tight to what matters. Life storms require us to revisit old habits and travel new roads. Life storms renew our true nature and clear the way for us to move less buried less attached to the things that had been mindlessly collected in the peaceful seasons of life.
Life Storms help me find out who I am and determine what really matters to me. It is in Life’s storms that I get tested, and that testing determines my convictions and values.
When Life has me backed up tight against a wall, and all options seem closed that I find out who I really am. It is then I learn what I really want in life and the price I am willing to pay to have it.
Over time I have become a bit of a Life Storm Chaser. Understand being a Life Storm Chaser is not about taking foolish risks or acting in self-sabotaging ways. Being a Life storm chaser is about being willing to step into life fully and face what comes. It about going outside your comfort zone, knowing that it might knock you back but not down. Being a Life Storm Chaser is about owning your whole life, not just the rainbow days.
I think back to standing on our boat dock as a teen, looking to the West and seeing the swirl of dark clouds moving across the lake. I remember being frozen in place unable to look away. Reason told me I should be running for the basement. But the controlled energy of the storm as I watched the lake being pulled up into the heavens had me locked in place wanting to know what would happen next, leaving me wanting to chase the storm and see how all this energy would unwind. I wanted to see what the world looked like from inside that storm. I was trapped it the power of that moment.
Stepping into the eye of Life’s Storms is often like that day on the boat dock. Every fiber of my being says run. Yet I want to be to be pulled up into who I can become in the storm. To be caught up in the energy of change or the breaking down and building up.
Surviving and embracing the great peace and beauty and power and chaos of Life Storms has made me understand that the blessing is not in the passing of a storm. But the blessing of a storm is being in the midst of the storm and embracing it with joy.
Celebrating the uncertainty around knowing it also produces a renewed certainty within me. I know, that’ each storm has a “Why” and life has allowed me the great privilege of being in the midst of it all.
What I wish for you is that you seek out the blessing in Life Storms and occasional go dancing in a summer rain along the way.
