Sleeping Through It All
When the tornado went through town last month, Albert and I had the privilege of sleeping through it even though it knocked down a tree in the back yard and ripped the power lines from the house. Perhaps, after watching the reports on the news about the impending serious weather conditions, instead of shrugging my shoulders and heading off to bed, I should have gone down to the basement and sought shelter. As it turned out, ignorance, or in my case, foolishness, was bliss.

Sometimes there is much we can do to prepare ourselves for impending disasters: tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and the like. We would be foolish to do nothing; and I was even though I was spared the consequences of what my foolish behavior could have wrought. If the tornado hat hit the house instead of the tree…. But it did not and I live to tell about it.

There are other times when there is nothing we can do to prepare for what suddenly happens. The event is upon us and all we can do is hold on for dear life. It is only when the dust settles that we can even begin to try to discern where we go from here. But whether we avoid what is happening by sleeping through it all or are awake to the bitter end, we have to deal with the consequences. There is no avoiding the results of what took place.

To be sure, there may be a temptation to go back to bed, literally and figuratively, in the hope that when we awake, the debris will be cleaned up and all will be well again. But of course we cannot. It is never that simple. In fact, sometimes the outing-back-together is cathartic. It is very, very freeing. It allows us to deal with what once was and no longer is as well as to live into what now is, perhaps reluctantly, perhaps willingly.

Sometimes we need a storm to pass through our lives to force us to examine what is really important and to sweep away that which has prevented us from growing. Sometimes it is in the picking up of the pieces that allows us to remember both what we valued most and what we placed too much value on and now realize wasn’t all that important anyway. Sometimes a good cleansing is what we need and it sometimes comes when we need it most.

There will always be storms in our lives and most will come when we would rather they not, but come they will anyway. The calm after the storm, the rainbow in the sky, remind us both of what took place and what can now be. What was may have been good. What will be can be even better – and we will not want to sleep through that!

WJP