Brave, Anyway

Tag: hurricane

  • Faith and Trees

    Faith and Trees

    I pray for trees.

    I don’t know if this is a middle-aged crazy lady thing or a just a trust-God-in-all-things thing. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. But yesterday, I found myself praying for my trees.

    Hurricane Isaias seemed like it would be a non-event. Maybe I no longer worry about storms that don’t bring Jim Cantore to town or maybe my threshold for what gets categorized as chaotic and dangerous is greater after the first half of 2020, but I really didn’t think much about this storm. Over the weekend, I did my regular grocery shopping and I didn’t even buy water bottles even when I noticed a few people with carts full of supplies.

    It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, as I sat in my home office and noticed the wind pick up and the dark clouds roll in, that I started to wonder if maybe I had not prepared as I should. I went outside to pull the basketball hoop down and an angry sky stared down at me.

    Hurricane Isaias clouds on Monday, August 3.

    I checked the forecast and relaxed a bit. Sustained winds in the 50 MPH range, with max occasional winds of 75 MPH, and not too much rain. I have a generator and a pantry full of food, I thought. We’ll be fine.

    But what about my trees? I love the trees in front of my house. They shelter our home, providing shade for us, and they are also the home for a couple of red birds. I lost a giant piece of my favorite tree last fall, so I know they aren’t indestructible. And then my neighbor in the culdesac lost a tree just like one of mine maybe two weeks ago, following a very mild storm. What if my trees couldn’t withstand the coming winds? Maybe I should have had them trimmed back. Maybe I should have at least called the tree guy before storm season.

    I didn’t know what to do and there really wasn’t anything I could do. So I relinquished the worry as I put my hand on each tree and asked God to protect it.

    Audrey caught me and asked what I was doing. Mommy, you’re praying for the trees?! She grinned at me and laughed a little, and I could tell she wasn’t sure what to think of me. But you know what? That’s OK. I decided it was a teaching moment and hoped I wouldn’t regret my words. I love these trees and God knows the desires of my heart, I told her. What’s important to me is important to Him.

    Sometimes we know a storm is coming, and we prepare. Sometimes we have no idea that a storm is coming and we are caught unprepared. Sometimes we know a storm is coming and we fail to prepare.

    I thought about those three categories of storm preparedness throughout the night as I listened to the wind whip around my house. But I did not look out the windows to check on my trees, determined to trust they’d be fine. Hoping that if I had enough faith, they’d be fine.

    This morning, Audrey and I went out for a walk and found that our trees had a few branches that needed tending, but they were standing tall and absolutely fine. Better than fine – they were beautiful, actually, as the bright blue sky showed through their branches.

    The sky through the trees after Isaias, on Tuesday, August 4.

    And I recalled the words of Dharius Morshun Daniels, who I watched preach recently, and I realized there’s a fourth category of storm preparedness: sometimes we have no idea a storm is coming, but we find ourselves prepared. His words came back to me: Just because you’re surprised doesn’t mean you’re not prepared.

    Prayer is part of preparation. Faith is part of preparation.

    3-Minute Video on Facebook: It’s Doubt That’s Illogical

    Dharius Morshun Daniels went on to say When I look at God’s track record in my past, doubting Him in my present is actually illogical. It would seem like faith would be illogical, but when you look at how faithful God has been, it’s actually doubt that is illogical.

    There hasn’t been a time when God has not come through…even with my trees.

  • The Stormiest Part of the Storm

    Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Earthquakes. Landslides. Fires. Volcanic eruptions. Diagnoses. Divorces. Death of loved one. Car accidents. Addiction. A child in trouble. War. Oppression. Terrorism.

    There are so many kinds of storms.

    People think I’m crazy for living in a place that’s prone to hurricanes. But I think it’s significantly more crazy to live in a place that’s prone to earthquakes. You don’t even know those are coming! Don’t even get me started on the level of crazy I think San Francisco folk have to be to leave their cars in potential cement death traps like parking garages. That’s just stupid C-R-A-Z-Y.

    With Florence headed toward the east coast, I’ve been thinking a lot about storms this week – storms we can prepare for versus storms we can’t. And what is the definition of storm, really? Is it just anything that is unsettling? Webster tells us storms can be a variety of things.

    • a disturbance of the atmosphere marked by wind and usually by rain, snow, hail, sleet, or thunder and lightning
    • a disturbed or agitated state, such as storms of emotion
    • a heavy discharge of objects, such as missiles
    • a tumultuous outburst
    • a violent assault on a defended position

    Perhaps the biggest storm of this week has been me. I am disturbed and in an agitated state and I have had outbursts. For the first time in two decades, I am facing a storm of weather that has the potential to greatly impact people I love and I have no one to rely on but me. No one to make decisions with. No one to second guess my logic or bounce ideas off of. No one to double check my list of to dos. If I make a bad decision about evacuating or don’t get enough food or water, people I love could really be impacted and it will solely be my responsibility and my fault. And that burden feels large.

    And you know what’s really silly? I have always really relied mostly on me because that’s just how I am, even when someone is standing next to me. Even if I had someone else in this house right now to bounce ideas off of and check my to dos, I would go with my gut on what to do and then blame myself if something went wrong. I’m a planner and I’m an organizer and I know that’s not everyone’s thing – and because I’m a little neurotic about lists and spreadsheets and planning (maybe more than a little neurotic), if something is missed or goes really awry, I am serious about going back through my checklist to figure out what the heck I was thinking.

    The one thing all storms have in common, I’ve decided, is that we truly can’t plan for them and they all kind of suck. OK that’s two things. Storms we don’t know are coming feel like a punch in the gut and that’s awful. But storms we can see looming on the horizon cause so much anxiety and stress that I think the knowing and waiting is actually the stormiest part of the storm. Is one kind of storm really any better than the other?

    We tend to define and even categorize whole time periods of our lives by storms. Life before a heart attack. Life after the death of loved one. Life before a job ended. Life after someone makes it to the other side of an addiction. Life before “the war.” Life after 9/11. Today is September 11, and with looking at just a few images I am easily transported right back to that day of surprise and uncertainty and overwhelming sadness. All of our lives have changed since that day – everything from our country’s foreign policy to air travel to our sense of overall safety within our borders.

    I tend to think of storms as an occasional small thing in the big scheme of things, but the truth is that storms are actually a pretty substantial part of all of our lives – and how we handle them and what we learn from them (or not) impacts the remainder of each of our lives greatly. One of the biggest lessons for me, and actually one of the great things about storms, is the way people come together to help and support one another. We see the worst of people in storms and we see the best of people in storms. Look for the helpers, Mr. Rogers would always say. Helpers are first responders, and helpers are family and neighbors and friends and teachers and doctors and nurses and counselors and people from Starbucks that we kinda know but not really, and even complete strangers.

    I allowed myself to get sucked into a pity party for a bit today. Because I forgot for a bit that it’s also my job to be a helper in a storm – to be a sister and a daughter and a neighbor and a company leader and a friend. I probably can’t get your generator working (God Bless Mark from Starbucks who helped me!), but I can call a friend who lives alone to make sure they have a plan and enough medicine.

    I allowed myself to get sucked into a pity party for a bit today, because I forgot for a bit that one of my jobs as a helper and as a Mom is to project calm and not add chaos. And in a moment of divine intervention at just the right moment today, I came across this gem – and I literally laughed out loud as I thought it might be easier for God to hush the waves of the sea than it is to still the Storm that is sometimes me.

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