After the Storm

There’s been an awful lot of storms lately. This weekend, I observed blackness parading across the sky, throwing down giant handfuls of rain on the earth below. The ceiling of the atmosphere begin to crack, zig zagged white strikes revealing purple under tones.

I love storms. I can get caught up in them, lose myself in the pure chaos. My world doesn’t seem so complex when the sky is breaking open. I feel small, in the very best way possible. Like all the things I work myself up about don’t really matter. My mind ceases to swarm. It clears the dust out of my heart. When I allow myself to be in a storm, the world around me feels real. But I also feel so frail. I know lightening could strike me, but it won’t.

I know I am at the mercy of the elements, yet I rest in the hand of The One who can speak one word and everything is still.

And after the storm,
I run and run as the rains come
And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.

I was supposed to go see Mumford and Sons last night. They were playing for an Invisible Children event. After attempting to get there, it didn’t work out. I ended up complaining about how my day was bad on facebook, and one of my friends said, “Wow, if that is the worse thing that happened to you today, you are lucky.” She’s right,  I bet missing a Mumford and Son’s show could make being on whitewhine.com. Even though they are epic beyond words.

Night has always pushed up day
You must know life to see decay
But I won’t rot, I won’t rot
Not this mind and not this heart,
I won’t rot.

Easter Sunday, the sky was mostly clear. Wild flowers freckled the side of the highway on the road. Light baby-girl pink ones, a few blue bonnets still showed their proud faces.

And I took you by the hand
And we stood tall,
And remembered our own land,
What we lived for.

It’s good to be alive, mostly. At moments it all sweeps me off my feet: that I get to breathe, to enjoy creation, and my creator. To have relationships, taste food, experience love, create.

That I am not some walking corpse, eyes dull, body battered, from too many storms.

Yet, there are scars. I don’t claim to have the fragile, infant skin from avoiding all bad weather. I’ve been soaked to the bone, unable to see a foot in front of me, drenched in sorrow.

I love storms, but I also love the way the earth feels after one. The smell is still in the air, a reminder of what has just occurred.

Destruction. Chaos. Death. Yet we survived.

It’s part of the resurrection story violently and beautifully playing out all around us every moment of every day.

And for now, you can’t have one without the other.

We all partake in life coming out of death every single day. If we were only aware of it.

So I am learning to embrace the storms, to get caught in them, to breathe them in. To feel all of it, and to wait in hope, in expectancy that eventually the Word will come…..

Stillness.

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more
tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your
fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.