Thoughtful About . . . Lightning

by Roseanna White | Jul 3, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

A couple weeks ago, my hubby showed me a video of a truck driving along a street. From the open fields on the other side of it, I’d guess it to be in the Midwest. Truck’s just driving along, when wham! A fork of lightning comes searing down and hits the truck. Not the telephone poles, not the building that the security cam is attached to. Not the highest point in the area. The truck.

The people were fine. The truck…not so much.

As I watched that video, it hit a nerve. I used to be terrified of lightning, of storms. So sure that it was going to strike my house, catch it on fire (the real phobia), and devour me. I was known a time or two to go hide under the blankets when a thunderstorm rolled through. I knew that those blankets wouldn’t keep me safe. But they provided a barrier. Insulation. Comfort.

Even today, when the phobia has been forgotten and I enjoy a good rousing summer storm, some of the old instincts are still there. A couple times recently I’ve been driving home during a storm severe enough to send my phone chirping with tornado or flash flood warnings. A couple times, I’ve been watching the clouds for swirling motion or lightning when I pass through the forests along my road and hit the open stretch where the farm fields take over.

And each time, I can’t help the feeling of vulnerability that hits me when I’m out in the open like that, in a metal cage of a car, with the storm clouds overhead. I’d blame it on the video, but the experience actually came first, LOL. I feel exposed. In danger. I press a little firmer on the gas pedal and head for the tree line. It feels safer there.

But it isn’t. I know that. Well I remember the lessons as a child that say that in a thunderstorm, do not take shelter under a tree–trees are the things most often struck by lightning, and you could be putting yourself in danger by being under them when branches snap off from the surge of electricity. I know it–but it’s counter-intuitive.

It feels safe. It feels better.

But that feeling is a lie. And the truth is, we can’t totally predict what lightning will do, where it will strike. It’s a force of nature. Not always the highest point. Not always the metal.

It’s got a life of its own, it seems. One a lot like life. Troubles don’t strike where we expect them to either. Stress and controversy and attacks don’t always come from the likely source. But come they do. And they leave us smoking and sizzling a lot of times, wondering where that came from.

It’s human nature to seek shelter in the things that feel safe. In our friends. In our family. In a good book. A warm blanket. In food. In a crowd. In our anger.

But those are just the trees. They provide a feeling of shelter…but they’re not.

Shelter is in the shadow of His wings. But here’s the thing–it might not always feel like it. Because to go before God, we have to lay our souls bare. We have to make ourselves vulnerable. We have to go before Him on the plain, where there’s nothing else to overshadow us and distract from us…and that’s scary. We’re afraid it’ll hurt. We’re afraid of what it will cost us.

We’re afraid His lightning will strike us…or at least that His light will make us too aware of our failings.

We serve a God who sends the wind forth from His treasuries. Who makes lightning for the rain. Who makes the earth tremble and the seas to swell. We serve a God who puts His finger on the smallest amoeba. Who strokes the wing of a butterfly. Who cares about our every little worry.

His infinity stretches both to the vast and the infinitesimal. To the storm and the slightest breeze. The lightning and the lightning bug.

He is our shelter, and it isn’t deceptive like that forest I want to hurry to in a storm. He’s true. And though our feelings might make us hesitate, though that shadowy whisper might say it will be too hard, too painful, we’re called to trust in Him. Yes, He might ask something hard of us. But we can trust it will be for our good.

We can trust that He is in control. That he knows where every bolt of lightning will land. And that He can tell us when to seek the fields and when the trees. When to stop and when to go. He has it all in His hand.

And He has us there too. Whether we feel it or not.

Thoughtful About . . . Cleaning Out

by Roseanna White | May 29, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

Last fall, we moved. But we moved in a rush, to a smaller house that was given to us by my hubby’s grandfather. We had a lot of work to do on the old one, so were in no rush to sell. We took what we needed right away…and then the bad weather closed in. It was not a good winter to move, and every weekend when it might have been possible, it was either snowing, raining, icing, our help was out of town, or there were more pressing repairs to be made to, say, automobiles.

So 9 months later, we’re finally getting to work–and on a tight schedule.

A few boxes of books. Just a few. Many more to come…

As the one who will not be patching walls and rewiring, hanging new doors or plumbing, I’m on clean-out detail. And oh. My. Gracious.

When we moved back to Cumberland from Annapolis, Xoe was only 3 months old–she’s now 8.5. I was only a year and a half out of college. Now we’re planning our 10 year reunion. When we moved, I’d shoved a lot of clothes into a portion of a closet that’s hard to reach and unseen, and totally forgot about them. I just went through them last week and had to laugh. The wedding dress, okay. But seriously? That dress from high school? And that one from middle school? I still had that?? Why in the world did I still have that???

I discovered the amazing mess of items that the kids managed to lose under the bunk bed and behind the dresser in their room. I re-learned how few books you can really fit in a box. I found an insurance policy from our first apartment back in 2001. I scrubbed out a pretty-darn-gross fridge with nothing but elbow grease, cold water, and Windex. And I marveled at how much junk we’d accumulated–things that seemed so important at some point, but which I now threw out with no compunction.

And I wonder…what else in my life–in my emotional, spiritual, unseen life–is like that? How much do I cling to when I need to let it go? How much is begging for a good spring cleaning, a purging, a blank slate, but is still gunked up because I don’t have the time or energy or strength to let it go?

Then there are the things we’re looking for. For months, Xoe has been wondering where her little Ty hippo was. We verified it wasn’t among the toys brought over. So every time we went to the other house, Xoe looked for Humba. We checked all the likely places. The toy box. Under the bed. Under the couch. Downstairs.

Nothing.

She was starting to get upset about it. When I went on my own to do some cleaning on Tuesday, the first words from her mouth afterward were, “Did you find my hippo?”

Nope.

My hutch, now filled with all my china. =)

Yesterday, we checked more places. Xoe sighed. We gave up and worked on other things–like moving my cabinet that would hold all my china, which had already been boxed and brought to the new house and now sat in the kitchen, taking up a quarter of my floor space. David and I (both sick) hefted the thing–and we hear Xoe call out, “There she is!”

She’d fallen, inexplicably, behind the cabinet. The last place we ever would have looked for her, there she was.

I was struck by the life lesson there too. That so many times we search and search for something. We work so hard for what we want, in the ways that seem logical. And we fail. Or at least falter. We never seem to attain that thing we’re reaching for.

So eventually we move on to other tasks. The ones that aren’t exactly what we want, but which are more important. And it’s there, in doing what we need to do, that we find that Thing. The one we’d been looking for. God knew all along what we needed to do to get us there, and once we gave up on following our own way–our so-called logic–we get where we need to go.

I’ve got a lot of packing and sorting, tossing out and selling ahead of me yet. No doubt I’ll have a lot more moments of “Why in the world did we keep this??” But maybe I’ll have some more realizations too. Some more opportunities to learn.

Humba the Hippo – home at last

And maybe we’ll find some more treasures along the way.