Now would probably be a good time for you to find shelter somewhere, hide in a storm shelter, get to a basement with concrete walls and a steel door. The problem is, your feet are stuck in a concrete block and there is nobody around to free you. So you try to pray for safety. You start begging and pleading that the storm won't hit you this time. You remind God about the last time it hit and how badly you got hurt, and you watch as the funnel gets bigger and blacker. You try again to free your feet from where they're stuck, frantically clawing and pulling and trying to kick. All your efforts reward you with is bleeding hands and no energy.
The cloud moves closer and you decide that maybe if you wave a flag of surrender it will lessen in its intensity since you've admitted defeat, so you wave a pitiful white rag in the air, sobbing that you don't need any reminders. You remember quite well so please don't hit me again. But the wind rages on and the roar grows louder.
You frantically start chipping at the concrete around your feet with a piece of debris that landed by you and you manage to knock loose a piece of concrete and gash a hole in your leg. The blood reminds you of another time in another place and you scream at the storm to stop and go away and leave you alone, but the debris is coming faster and it's starting to hail.
You finally recognize this particular tornado. It's been here before. It's filled with a swirling vortex of emotions you never wanted to feel in the first place and certainly never wanted to feel twice in the same lifetime. You keep chipping at your other foot and manage to free it, but there is no where to run. You're on a plateau with nary a dip or a hollow to be found as far as the eye can see. So you huddle in the howling wind trying to shield your face. And it's there. On top of you. Surrounding you. Picking you up and slamming you back down to the ground with gale force blows.
It's slamming memories into you, impaling you with every "what if" you've ever what iffed. Stabbing you with splinters of shattered hopes and dreams. It's spinning you from fear to anger to pain so fast you feel nauseated but you're so busy trying to protect your face from the splinters you don't have time to puke. So it once again while you're shielding your face, stabs you in the heart with the biggest piece of debris yet. The one you are always sure will kill you when it hits. It's a familiar piece of debris and you foggily recognize the words written on it with your own blood from when it hit you the first time. You wrote it yourself when you thought you were dying. You wanted to leave a message for the world to know what killed you. So you wrote the words that would tell everyone what killed you. The words say "My baby died."
And that's when you remember. You're not dead. It has never managed to kill you yet, even when you thought it would. And you realize that you are floating. Carried away on some wind current... away from the violent raging of the storm front. And then it drops you gently into a puddle and you realize it's a puddle of your own tears. You clean off your cuts and bandage your wounds the best you can for being in the middle of nowhere, alone on a vast prairie bathing yourself in your own tears. And you pick up the last big beam that hit you right in the heart and you bring it with you so people will know why you look like you just got hit by a tornado. You pick up your flag of surrender and you write again with your own blood: "My baby died. But I didn't. I don't know how, I don't know why. But I'm still here. I'm still standing."
And then you scream after the retreating storm. "I'm still here! You still didn't kill me! Come back and let me fight you! I need to try again!" And the funnel lifts off the ground and goes into the sky and the sun breaks out from behind the clouds. You stare in wonder because you really didn't actually believe yourself when you told that storm it wasn't going to win. You turn around and there is the familiar shape of your home on the horizon.
You limp home as fast as you can and sigh with relief when you see the familiar calendar hanging there telling you that you are relatively safe for another year. Tornado season is past. You hang your rag of surrender on the wall for everybody to see and prop your debris in the corner as a reminder that no matter how many times it slams itself through your heart you're going to still keep going. Because on the wall above the debris are other words.
Written up there as plain as day it says "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." And then you can finally find shelter and do a happy dance because you know who has kept you alive all this time. You know that the gates of hell cannot prevail against him. Because if they could, you wouldn't be here anymore. So you go to bed knowing that even if morning is years from now, even if forever takes forever to get here, you'll be there.
Because weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Wow.powerful.
ReplyDelete