One Monday in May

I awoke abruptly at the sound of our power going out. Funnily enough, such a sound is usually remarkably silent, save for a few beeps from electronics, and then the absence of the hum of modern amenities like fans and air conditioning.  On that hot and humid Monday afternoon in May, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  

When I had laid down for a midday nap that afternoon, it had been at the behest of a migraine I was in the midst of battling.  My hope had been that while my boys napped, maybe my mind could rest and my head could find some relief.  

We’d been in the midst of a stressful season for years of our life at that point.  Put simply, it seemed as if we were constantly being slammed by stressors, some foreseen and others that absolutely blindsided us, and we were weary.  A barn fire, massive termite damage, snowballing home repairs…the list went on and on.  We felt so over that season of our lives, and we hoped to be nearing the end of the worst of it.   

The current project was remodeling our main bathroom.  Thanks to a previous owner, there was a janky window installed in the shower that looked like it had been salvaged from an RV.  If it ever kept out the weather in the RV, we’ll never know, but it was fairly apparent that it hadn’t successfully kept the water out from weather outside or our shower inside; the bathroom was a total gut job.  We tore out walls, sub flooring, and even some studs.  For a while we could peer down into the crawlspace and also outside, as we had opened the exterior wall up wide to remove demolition debris and to reframe the exterior wall. 

We were also in the long and drawn out process of residing the house, so figured we’d finish up that wall after we got around to there with the new siding.  As of yet, that wall was the last exterior wall for us to start the new siding on.  My husband is known for overbuilding things, so the new wall framing was much more substantial and much less soggy, thankfully.  The goal was that within the next few months, the bathroom would be completely finished and we would be able to return to some semblance of normalcy and a season of less stress.  

That particular Monday in May, my daughter, who had just completed kindergarten the week before, was happily working away, assisting my husband on the house projects while her younger brothers and I napped.  We had recently installed new sub flooring in the bathroom and had fresh OSB sheathing up on the bathroom’s exterior wall.  We had bought sheetrock that morning and unloaded it into the entryway of the house.  I was hoping my rest would recuperate me enough that I could assist my husband with hanging the sheetrock that evening. 

But then the power went out.  I sat up, a bit befuddled by what was going on.  Hail began pinging against the windows.  Still unsure of what was happening, I hollered for my husband and roused myself out of bed.  He came rushing upstairs and I asked him what was going on; he said it was starting to storm and we should grab the boys and get to shelter.  The urgency in his voice struck me as abnormal.  Each of us grabbed a little boy from their bed and went downstairs.  

The back door had blown open by the time I descended the steps.  Still in somewhat of a sleep dazed stupor, I ran over to shut and lock the door for fear of what mess might blow in on such strong winds.  

Typically, a kind neighbor across the street had opened his storm shelter to us when we had needed a place, and I’m sure our next door neighbor would’ve welcomed us to their basement had we asked.  But my husband had the strong sense that we should shelter in place.  

Trusting his gut, we turned to the small closet under the stairs which we had crammed the family into a time or two before when we couldn’t go to the neighbor’s.  But it was blocked by several pieces of heavy sheetrock.  It was becoming ever more apparent that we wouldn’t have time to move them before the brunt of the storm hit.  So we decided to go into the bathroom; it was but a windowless box of a room, but it would have to do.  

As we huddled in the corner of the bathroom, we said a prayer.  And still, the storm was hitting.  I felt strongly that the kids should be taking part in the praying too; we had taught them the Lord’s prayer, so we started leading them in it.  

In a moment like that, words can be hard to come by, and so the comfort of having the words Jesus Himself gave us to pray seemed fitting.  We were placing our trust in His holiness, His sovereignty.  We were bringing to Him this very human need, asking forgiveness, and begging His protection and strength be with us.  We were petitioning Him, trusting Him, and hoping for His will to happen.  

 “...your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name. 

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven….”  

Matthew 6:8-10

Those may have been the words my mouth was saying as we tried to guide our children through that moment.  But my mind was praying much scarier prayers.  My thoughts raced with terrifying things that I threw up to God, though I felt like I couldn’t utter any of them aloud in that moment, for fear of scaring the kids.  But they were prayers I strongly felt compelled to pray nonetheless.  

I gave us back to Him...my kids…my husband…myself.  We knew our lives were not our own, but I felt so strongly the need to acknowledge that fact in that moment.  We needed to surrender ourselves to what His will held for our futures.  In that instance, I knew I needed to relinquish our lives to Him (again), because in the midst of a storm such as that, you really don’t know with any certainty if the next moment may be your last.  

“...yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life?

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.””

James 4:14

So I prayed my scary prayers.  What I dared not speak out loud, I said in my soul.  Mostly I beseeched Him that if our time had come that He would be merciful and that our children would not be ripped from our arms…I begged that they have the comfort of being held and loved in their last moments, should that come to pass. I was at peace with whatever His will was going to bring about moving forward.  I knew He had provided for us and protected us time and time again.  I needn’t worry that He would fail me.  

May His will come.  May it be done.

You see, standing there in that box of a bathroom, I became ever so aware of my shirt whipping about on my body from the amount of wind moving within our house.  In my mind that could only mean that this house, this spot that we were sheltering in, may be starting to tear apart piece by piece and that it could take us with it.  We could hear things hitting the house and hitting it hard.  We were just waiting for something to burst through that thin layer of unfinished wall, which was the only physical thing between us and the violent winds outside.

What felt like it lasted forever was likely only moments, maybe minutes.  The winds subsided.  We were shaken, but we stepped out of that bathroom unscathed.  God had sheltered us even though our actual shelter had seemed not substantial enough to weather such a storm.  

The first thing my husband saw was that our huge scaredy-cat sweetheart of a dog was in the house.  Due to our allergies, our dogs had always been mostly outdoors, and dear old Mac hated coming in the house, even to lick up spilled food off of the floor.  But there he was, cowering between the couch and the ottoman.  At first I thought there had to be a gaping hole in the house somewhere that he had gotten in through.  As it turns out, he could sense how scary the coming storm was and had run in when the wind blew open the back door.  He opted to face his fear of the indoors rather than that of impending doom outdoors.  Our other dog somehow survived outside.  The same could not be said for our ducks, some of which were smashed by falling trees.  

The first thing I noticed when I left the bathroom was that our back hydrant was turned on full-bore and water was pouring out.  I felt almost as if in a trance as I walked my stupefied self out the back door through the debris and where the fence that used to be there wasn’t anymore and shut it off. 

The yard and road were a mess of fallen trees and downed power lines, to the point, we weren’t even sure we could load up in a vehicle and safely extract ourselves from the property.  The neighbor’s garage had flipped over on one of our cars; the things we had heard hitting the house were his many wood working tools and projects.  The barn we had rebuilt just a few years prior following a fire, was now leaning.  The old addition off of one side of our house appeared to have taken the worst of the damage.  Our roof was obviously ruined and several leaks sprung up shortly.  Most of our trees were badly damaged or were no longer standing; fortunately for us, they decided to not stand somewhere other than on the house.  And there was more...so much more that it at first seemed so overwhelming.

Our next door neighbor shouted out his window at us to see if we were okay.  He had weathered the storm in his kitchen.  The tornado had hit so quickly and with such little warning that the winds suctioned his basement door so tightly shut that he hadn’t been able to open it and get to shelter.  But it turned out to be a miraculous thing, as a tree branch had fallen through their roof clear to their basement where he would have been.  

The neighbor we normally would’ve sheltered with wasn’t even home.  Turns out the fact that we didn’t try to venture out to find shelter elsewhere may have saved our lives, for we would’ve been caught in the midst of the tornado that had just blown through.  

Not two minutes before the tornado hit, it had been beautiful out and my husband and daughter had been outside.  He happened to hear a storm warning come out over the radio and decided to shut the barn doors and head inside.  The hail started when they got to the house.  

How easily could they have been swept away in the storm!?  How remarkable the many little pieces that fell into place that prevented that from being how this story ended!  We escaped unscathed. And I don’t doubt the evidence of His hand in that.  

 This storm was but another unforeseen calamity in our stressful season.  But as He’d proven time and again, the Lord was faithful to protect and provide for our family in circumstances we felt completely unprepared for.   

“And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”

Matthew 7:25 

I daresay that He was preparing us all along for these crazy things we couldn’t have foreseen coming.  (I'm not sure we would've wanted to see them coming because we probably would've tried to avoid the hardship.) But our faith is stronger for us having gone through it.  There are things we couldn’t walk through now if He hadn’t brought us through those things then.  Thank God that He stretches and grows us.  

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name,

you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.  For I am the Lord your God…your Savior…

you are precious in my eyes…and I love you...Fear not, for I am with you…”

Isaiah 43:1-5

Today I sit back in awe of the things He has done in our lives in the five years since this storm.  It was but one of many storms we would (and will) have to weather in this life.  And what a blessing to get to do so serving the Lord!  I won’t lie and say it wasn’t stressful or that tears weren’t shed along the way because they certainly were.  There are a whole lot of other details I could share, but since you’ve stuck with me long enough as is, I’ll leave those for another time.  

But for those of you (everyone) who will face storms in your life , be they literal or figurative…know that the Lord knows all and sees all, and that includes your need.  You can’t make it through this life without encountering some rough weather.  Maybe He will bring you into something that will stir some growing in you that you need and can’t get any other way.  How He works is such a wondrous mystery to us because we can’t wrap our meager human minds around it.  Hindsight helps, but we still lack that omniscience He has.  

And that’s okay, because I’ve come to realize that I don’t need to know or understand it all anyway.  The timing may never seem to add up to what I would've chosen, yet somehow He works it all out for our good and for His glory and the results are way better than anything I could've come up with.  Trust in that, friend, for whatever season you find yourself in. 

My husband and I have come to affectionately refer to this season of our lives as our “season of calamity.”   But we’re better for every bit of it, even if it was a struggle, mostly because we got to witness His faithfulness through it. Even more rewarding is getting to see glimpses of our children's recognition of it.

Just a couple of weeks after our tornado, we celebrated my birthday. My sweet girl made me a card and pictures and these notes, which read, "God is good all the time" and "God protects us at scary moments." She gets it, guys. In the midst of all the chaos and craziness that this storm wrought on our lives in what was already a pretty crazy and chaotic season of our life, she was able to see His good hand in it at the sweet age of five. Child-like faith like that often seems harder to grasp the further distance we are from childhood. I daresay that shouldn't be the case...the more we see His hand at work in our lives over the years, the more filled with faith we should be.

He knows what He's doing. Even when it involves waking you abruptly from a nap on a Monday in May. I thank God that He did.

There truly are better things ahead than any we leave behind. I can't wait to see what else the good Lord has in store.