A massive blowing snowfall and freezing cold temperatures might be the first thought that enters your mind when I mention Wisconsin weather. Those days were cozy and fun for me as a kid growing up on the farm on Dicus Road. That’s when cookies were put in the oven and eaten fresh from the oven, putting our fingers at peril of burning. We indulged anyway, in two-handed enjoyment.
The weather that struck deep fear developed on sticky sweltering summer days. The kind that start hazy and stay at a simmer until late in the afternoon when you experience the increase in tension to a rolling boil that often threatens to overflow the pot. This is when Wisconsin, known for its winter, can produce some tornadoes rivaling Dorothy’s Kansas.
I was terrified of these devils.
One summer Saturday, hot and sweaty from the day's work on the farm - gardening, bringing in hay, cleaning the house - it was clear that a storm was imminent. Everyone felt it. The air was thick and I don’t remember what we had for supper. My mind was set on surviving the coming storm. I kept one eye fixed on the open windows to watch the color of the sky. I was a kid who’d been taught to read the sky for weather changes so I knew what to watch for.
The sky turned green.
Mom and Dad gave the call to head to the basement. This usually meant a twister had been sighted. Indeed.
Crowded into the basement, we looked out the casement windows and watched as it swirled and whirled its way across the fields in our general direction.
Fear loomed large in me - a terror that paralyzes.
I squinted my eyes tightly, only daring a peek now and then as the noise increased. I heard the crack of a tree limb. Someone announced that a tree went down just missing the house.
Oh God, I was scared.
My brothers were thrilled at the excitement and took off outdoors, my parents unable to halt their charge any longer.
I was never leaving the basement. Ever.
Following the tornado was a loud thundering, lightning-flashing, rain-pelting storm. Just the kind of storm that bangs on because it can. The pot had overflowed and there was no containing it.
I remember shaking with cold. My hot sweaty fear now giving way to the shivering exhaustion.
My dad picked me up and carried me out of the basement.
He held me tight and sat in the rocking chair in the living room facing the window. His arms remained around me while he rocked and told me everything was going to be alright. I buried my face in his hardworking, carpenter muscled chest. It didn’t smell very good, but I knew I was safe.
He held me there until my shaking stopped and I relaxed.
He was in no rush to move and neither was I.
I knew nothing could hurt me from my position in his arms on the rocking chair.
I share this snippet of my life because so many of us are in a storm right now. Most everyone I suppose. The pot is about to boil over or maybe it already has, leaving us in the basement with our fears and terrors and imaginations or actual tragedies. Our homes or our very lives may be in danger of metaphorical falling trees. We are in a storm. A big one - that bangs and crashes all around us. We have sworn to never leave the basement.
We are locked up.
Shaking and exhausted. Worn out from the toll of terror without and within ourselves.
I know. I am experiencing this reality in my life.
Yesterday I met a pastor who looked like he’d been hit by a truck.
I see in the eyes of people around me the question; Will I, will we survive this?
It’s been a double-down difficult year.
And then I feel the arms of God reaching to pick me up.
These are arms I am learning to trust.
They are strong and most importantly, they are full of compassion and such mercy.
In the midst of the storm, I am held.
This sounds trite, I know. And I am full of questions. I am still afraid of many things.
I do not understand how today will go, let alone tomorrow.
I am convinced that God is present with us.
We are not abandoned.
When Jesus hung on the cross he said, God, why have you left me alone? I believe he said that for us, giving voice to our human feelings and experiences. It helps me to know that Jesus understood the fear, the loneliness, the sheer challenge it is to live as a human being. And I believe that God was present there too.
Not in a hard-hearted, mean-spirited, I am letting my son be killed way, but in a deeply agonized, tearing his heart out way.
These are the arms that offer to hold us in the storm. These arms know the struggle and the agony and the suffering. These arms made and know us.
My options are not great apart from this.
Who can I ultimately trust? My beloved friends and family are all human and afraid too. They are wonderful, but we’re wearing the same shoes. We can certainly be community and for that I am thankful. But we all need bigger arms to hold us.
I cannot trust myself. I am certainly not reliable. Holding myself seems like a bad idea.
So, this is the position I am choosing to take. I have stationed myself in God’s arms to be rocked, to lean against that parental chest full of ultimate nurture and power.
And I don’t want to ever leave.
Here is a prayer my family reads every morning.
It’s from Common Prayer - A Liturgy For Ordinary Radicals.
“May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you;
may he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm;
may he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you;
may he bring you home rejoicing : once again into our doors.”