Storms

My wife and I share among other things, a mutual love of storms.  We were at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon once in mid summer while a front was passing through.  The storms were pretty small but impressive in terms of their thunder and lightning.  We went out on a point below the lodge to see one of the mini-storms make it's way up the canyon toward us.  The front of the storm was a lightning fireworks show accompanied by explosive thunder.  We watched for a bit as the kids played in a wide place on the point we occupied.  Suddenly the same thought hit us both at the same moment, "We really need to get out of here NOW."  We corralled the kids and hurried back to the lodge. 

In literature, storms are quite often used to foreshadow major change of some sort.  Generally it's not happy change.  One of our neighbors became familiar with this concept the other night when a storm carrying high winds blew Redwood branch through one of their skylights.  That changed their night in a significant way and gave them a vent where their skylight used to be.

The bible contains a good many storms.  I can't think of any recorded there that describe scared, storm watching couples that should know better.  Still though, there are storms that get people thrown overboard, storms that wreck ships, storms that pass by without doing anything at all and even a storm that Jesus tells to be still. 

Storms of one sort or another will find you wherever you are; it's the nature of who we are and where we live.  It's sometimes possible to the pick the kind of storm you want but avoiding them simply isn't possible.  Life has seasons and life has storms.  Life even has seasons of storms.  And sometimes we either wait in place too long, can't get out of the way fast enough or are just completely surprised and overcome by the onrushing fury. 

Often, our first response to a storm is denial.  That's a bit like the child that stands in front of you shivering, telling you they aren't cold because they don't want to stop playing long enough to come in and put on a jacket.  Or maybe like imagining that the lightning storm shaking the ground, ionizing the air and almost blinding you would never actually hit you.  Another common reaction is to hide the fact of the storm from others...like when our children with literally droopy eyes and slurred speech would tell us they weren't tired, bare seconds before they passed out. 

The truth is, we all live through and even with storms.  There's a theological word for acknowledging storms.  The word is this: confession.  Confession is not just a list of right and wrong, naughty and nice.  Neither is confession limited to only speaking the positive.  It's an invitation by the living God who spoke us to be utterly transparent with him and with each other.  It covers everything, finds us where we are and invites us into the reality of who he is and who we were spoken to be.

The best we can do really in response to a storm is to believe in God.  By that I don't mean believe that he exists, believe that he pre-, post-, a- millennial or believe that he's a list of attributes, or study how he's omni this or that or even memorize the Old and New Testament in the original languages.  I mean instead that the very best we can do is believe and accept that God is who he says he is, "I AM WHO I AM."  Because, if that's true, then we are who he spoke us to be, and the storm is what he says it is.

We've had so many people help us through our storms over the last five years it's literally impossible to call them all to mind...not to mention the people who have chosen to help us anonymously.  In part, they helped us because at one point, we just laid down in imperfect part at least, our pretense that everything was OK and that we weren't scared, hurt and vulnerable.  It's one of the hardest things Christy and I have done in either of our lives.  We didn't know it at the moment, but in that moment we turned and started running toward safety, toward the lodge, toward the stuffed chairs and the hearth fire.