Storms

The stress of this weekend’s storm is beginning to take a toll on my yoga heart and gentle nature.

Terry and I and a dear friend were in a large auditorium on Saturday to watch a play being put on by a local theater company. It was AMAZING! The actors were of middle and high school age, but you would have thought they were professional members of a Broadway production. The energy, the talent, the projection. It was all great fun.

About halfway through the play I leaned over to Terry and asked, “Is that rain I hear outside?” He replied, “Yes, sounds like it.” We went on watching the play. Afterwards, we walked out the doors to heavy fog, steam rising and the heaviness of a recent storm. You know that thick feeling of humidity during summer months, yet it was much chillier than when we went in the building. More change became apparent as we drove home. So many branches on the ground, streets so covered in leave debris that you couldn’t see the lane lines. And then we noticed the hail stones everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. Piles of them.

This was no ordinary storm.

We continued driving and there was a hush in the car with the frequent expressions of, “Oh my. Look there.” As we got closer to our friend’s house there was a sinking feeling of the enormity of houses being damaged. Her neighborhood was covered in the same leaf and limb carnage as the roads to get there. We wished her the best as she got out of the car and into her home. Then we began the trip to our own house with fear lingering in the air. We wanted to get there as soon as possible but at the same time we were driving slowly to take in all the changes; street signs ripped out of the ground, trees down taking power lines with them, traffic patterns changed due to large limbs in the roadways.

Before we could reach our house, our good neighbors texted us, “Are y’all ok?” Ugh. Anxiety was brewing a new batch of fresh fear. What would we find when we got there? Was the roof still on the house? Were the two huge oak trees in the back yard still standing?

As we pulled into our driveway, we were relieved to see the house was still there complete with roof, carport, and trees. Terry spoke with our neighbor who was doing an external assessment of his own house while I was heading inside to put on rubber boots and also took the time to look through the inside of our house. My brain was doing everything it could to process what had happened. We discovered two storm windows had been shattered and my beloved garden had a huge limb in the middle of it with a large section of the fence taken out. My heart was broken. Most of the young plants had either been sheared off or were flattened by the limb. I may have one pepper plant and about half of the green beans left. The early peas seem ok as they are up against another fence. 80% of the baby peaches on our tree littered the ground.

Many of our neighbors had much more damage with more windows blown out, cars totaled from hail damage, fully aged trees downed, and no power. If you are local to Rock Hill, then I’m sure you have your own story of the devastation.

What do we come away with as we navigate the aftermath of storms? It took several days for me to settle with and accept the significant changes. I have noticed that this has been true most of my life. It takes me time to step back process what transpired, be it the storm of nature of the storm of an argument or the storm of a relationship breakup.

 Storms take time.

The initial brewing and the resulting blowup are just part of a storm. What happens afterward is the real transformation; the storm is just a catalyst. What we do with the destruction shows our growth. Sometimes I can get so wrought up in the storm that I can’t see or don’t even allow the growth; I’m still in the storm long after it passes. Ugh. But again, that seems to be my pattern. What is also a part of my pattern is when I do finally let go of the storm and take the time to sit in the calm, I can look again at what happened without the emotional upheaval and see the beauty. Yes, there is beauty in storms, in suffering. From these upheavals we can come to a place of compassion, empathy, and clarity. Oh, we love the times in life when there are no disturbances; joy, elation, everything is going my way. But our best work, our truest nature, who we really are, is found in the storms.

Bring it on Mother Nature, bring it on.