Prepared

March 17, 2021

It’s here.

The weather is raging outside the new windows my dad recently installed. I’m watching the local weather report discussing the incredibly high tornado risk and watching the purple and red line move across the map he’s pointing at, seeing it cross the intersection near my home. Wind gusts are up to sixty miles per hour, they’re describing a torrential downpour.  

Lightening just flashed bright outside and before I could start to count, the crack followed. I still and wait to hear the crashing fall of one of the large and looming, slightly decaying pecan trees out our front door, as they so often do during these kinds of storms, but there’s nothing. I’m shocked the power is still on, as it’s usually quick to go out.

I’m ready.

My emergency bag is packed with a change of clothes, my travel toiletries, my keys, ID, some cash, a few granola bars, water bottles, a flashlight, my bible and journal, my chargers, and necessary medications. My shoes are on my feet even though I’m in yoga pants and a sweatshirt. My brother moved my mattress away from the window I sleep under and into our safe space, a hallway in our house away from any windows and at the center of the home. It’s closer to my family and away from the trees that surround my room.

The lightning strikes and my ears feel the start of popping. That happens before a tornado comes, so I move from the couch in the living room to the mattress in the hallway. Since my ears didn’t pop all of the way, we haven’t lost power, and the National Weather Service hasn’t changed from a tornado watch to a warning, I don’t wake my parents or grab my brother and move us all into the safe space. I leave them be for now, but turn up the volume on the TV and listen carefully as I write. The meteorologist says the system is moving fast and though there have been dozens of tornados today in Alabama from this system, it looks like Montgomery might miss it. But the hot air it’s going to connect with in the eastern part of the state will probably refuel it and give it more tornados.

I’m torn.

Part of me is relieved. I don’t know that I could handle huddling with my family, feeling the tornado rip through the foundation of the home I’m resting on, then slinging on my emergency bag, shifting through the debris, walking to a motel, eating McDonalds, and rebuilding my home and my life again like I did a little over a decade ago. I don’t know that I could handle losing my family, so I’m relieved it looks like there won’t be a tornado at my home tonight. 

But as the meteorologist says it looks like Montgomery, inexplicably got lucky, and now the storm is strengthening again and the eastern part of Montgomery needs to buckle up for a difficult night, part of me is trying to chastise myself and counter, “well Madison, isn’t it better you than anyone else?” I think of the concept of complete strangers and think to myself that I’d rather carry the trauma and burden and recovery of a tornado than it befalling someone else. But why is that? I don’t think this self-sacrificial show is so noble as it seems. Though I can’t imagine how it’s self-serving except to fuel my (becoming apparent) dependence on crisis.

I think, on the one hand, I want to bear pain for another person. If I can carry the suffering and another person stays light and free, I’ll do that. I’m already scarred, literally and figuratively, what’s a few more?

But as I write that, I can’t help but catch myself. To protect someone from suffering that I can neither control nor counter is to enter matters exclusive to God. But there’s a thought within me I almost dare not write for fear it will be misconstrued. To deprive someone of suffering allowed or caused by God, intended for a person’s good and for God’s glory, whether out of good intentions or not, is to deprive them of the gift of suffering, the honor of sharing in the suffering of Christ, and the eternal reward of patiently enduring suffering, faithfully pursing God, and obediently stewarding suffering. Or even coming to God for the first time in the midst of suffering. The more distance I get from this initial suffering in my life, the more the Spirit of God points out scriptures in his Word, the more this understanding is made clear to me.

I don’t need to be a begrudging martyr.

I can work to make life better for those experiencing poverty and/or need, can work to bring justice to the oppressed and those experiencing injustice, can share God’s heart in caring for my neighbors, but I live with a self-imposed guilt that I’m not taking on personally the suffering or traumatic events of anyone and everyone on earth.

Christ already did that.

I can allow myself to feel relieved as the meteorologist calls the all-clear for Montgomery and in the next breath says it’s going to be a long, hard night for those in East Alabama. I can pray protection over my family and my brother’s girlfriend in Auburn and my family in Dothan. And I can pray gratitude for how God answered my prayer for safety tonight over myself and my family here. 

I can also ponder why I seem to feel like I’m due for a doomsday. Why I don’t believe that I can go too long between crises without another one impending. Why am I on pins and needles expecting a diagnosis, an assault, a storm? Why do I feel like I depend on destruction?

I had two scans lately, both came back clear. I had a bad weather night; I’ll see tomorrow. I’ve had such good news lately and I don’t know what to do with myself.

Ah.

I don’t know what to do with myself when things are well. 

I know what to do in a crisis. I know how to live, how to operate, how to manage. I don’t know what to do with myself when my life is going well. It’s like when I graduated with my bachelor’s, I immediately applied for a master’s program. The ink wasn’t dry on my diploma and I’d applied. Keep in mind, I was already working a full time job in DC. I didn’t need a masters. I excitedly told my parents I’d gotten into the program they didn’t know I’d applied for, and my mom gently said, “Madison, do you really want or need a masters? I’m worried you don’t know how to live without the structure of school, and you don’t know what to do with yourself, you’re a little scared, and so you applied for a master’s. If this is really what you need and want to do, that’s fine, but if you’re applying out of fear, or because you don’t know what life looks like without a schedule and deadlines and structure set by school, then I don’t think you should pursue it.”

It was wise then and it’s wise now. She was right. I declined the acceptance and learned how to live without school and the external structure to my life that it provided. Now I need to learn how to live without a crisis in my life. Truthfully, I don’t even know where to begin. But I do think it’s time I learned.

I wondered, earlier today, if I’d ever be able to face a tornado-probable day without intense fear. I’ve been anticipating this severe weather day since they announced it on Sunday, have been fighting a migraine since I woke up Tuesday morning. My previous tornado experience has taught me that I’m not the exception to life, and you can’t control a tornado. But I desperately don’t want to be so paralyzed in fear. All day my family or my coworkers have been making comments about what they’re doing tomorrow or later this weekend and each time, in my mind around my coworkers, but out loud around my family, I’ve thought, “I don’t know why you’re making plans for the future, we probably won’t be here tomorrow given the storm. If we are, it’ll be spent digging around for our belongings.”

My family just lets the comments go on by. They’re used to my fear over storms. Earlier tonight over burgers and fries with my family I did say matter-of-factly to my family, “I want everyone to know that I’m very scared right now. So, that’s a thing that’s going on.” My parents just laughed and responded, “yeah we know.”

We played a game of Bohnanza and then I went to my room to do a little more work. Sitting down at my desk, I googled a local meteorologist’s Twitter page to see what his predictions were. He had a video of one of the large tornados that touched down in an empty field earlier today, just thirty miles from me. Someone filmed it on a drone. I started to watch it and soon clicked to full screen. There was something…. I don’t know…beautiful about it. Destructive, yes, but as I saw the drone’s video capturing the weakening and strengthening, the hopping, the winding bands around the main funnel, I couldn’t help but think it was…majestic. I felt an awe settling in my heart and fear was nowhere to be found.

I got up and packed my emergency bag. I now know what happens after your house is destroyed by a tornado, which means I know what I need to do and bring beforehand. After the tornado hit all those years ago, my mom packed a suitcase in a haze and it wasn’t until she got to the motel that she realized her suitcase was just her underwear drawer. I know this time that there will be glass and debris, so I should put on my shoes and either the cars will be destroyed or the streets won’t be drivable, so I should put on good tennis shoes. I plug in my devices to charge, make sure a few things that will bring me comfort are handy, and I think to myself that I feel prepared in a practical, yet not paranoid kind of way.

Then I continue reading my new Dee Henderson novel and eventually I’m on the couch watching the squall line hit Montgomery. I don’t feel fear. I feel calm, focused.  

The squall line is moving through and so I think I’ll be able to go to bed soon. I pull the teddy bear I’d rescued from potential destruction a decade ago closer to me as I sleep on the mattress on the floor, shoes still tied on my feet, too tired to move to take them off, and I need to put my pen down so I can drift off to the sound of the meteorologists on the tv in the other room.

But it’s the first time since February of 2014 that a tornado watch or warning has been issued where I think I’ll see tomorrow.

And tomorrow the skies are clear.

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