The Eye of the Storm

I found myself in Atlanta this morning, when the rain started pounding my car. I knew that there were going to be storms but not tornadoes! There were warning sirens going off. Huge drafts of wind were tossing my poor old mini-van to and fro. The raindrops sounded like hail on the windshield. I got to my destination and looked around at the other people in the room, of whom I knew no one. There was a bit of fear and uncertainty as the wind whistled at the door. I imagined, what if this cool looking ceiling just crashed in on us? But alas, it didn't, and eventually I made my way back to Villa Rica by inches. My kids started sending me pictures of tornadoes in the area. A Carrollton fire station was hit badly. The news was going crazy on all the situations around.

What if it were my last hour? I heard that Rhubarb Jones, that familiar Southern disc jockey, died yesterday. I assumed he was old, but he was not that much older than me (so that means he was young). I had just heard him talking on the radio and now he's gone. We're all going to be pushing up daisies someday, though we don't believe it. I have wrestled with the fear of dying at times, not because I'm unsure of where I am going....but because I see how very difficult it is for families and loved ones after you're gone. I still grieve for my Grandmas and a few friends. You never really get over that. But it's all a part of the mysterious fabric of life, babies and the old folks, birth and death. 

In the middle of the storm, I got great news (and a couple of pictures) of our twin grandbabies that are on the way...babies that God has been talked to a lot about, even before they were conceived. I think about the mind of God, how He knows everything since before the invention of time. Those beautiful little souls, in His mind's eye. We dare not treat any of them lightly. Made in the image of God, with a couple of twists of incomprehensible DNA twining together to make the most complex beings in the universe. More sophisticated than the planets, more vulnerable than we can imagine. Trusting, trusting in His plans and timing. We breathe, we pray, we plant our faces to the ground. I hear the birds' riotous singing after the storm. The shrieking wind, swirling, debris everywhere, fear, reports, caution, danger....then came stillness and then the song. That's so much like life.