Hurricane Season

"I need You like a hurricane/ Thunder crashing, wind and rain/ To tear my walls down/ I’m only Yours now"

I remember watching the news not long after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and having my attention caught by this beautiful mahogany skinned elderly woman. Her house had been completely demolished, literally scattered down the street. The reporter asked her how it made her feel to have lost everything and what she was going to do now. As the camera tightened in on her face, she looked into the distance, her eyes becoming very far away. Then she smiled, shook her head, and said, “I guess I’m gonna rebuild. I ‘spose it wasn’t nothing but a bunch of old walls anyway.” The reporter didn’t exactly know what to do with that response and the interview ended with him simply saying “Thank you.” I have no idea what happened after the camera stopped rolling. Who knows, maybe the realization of the devastation finally hit and that sweet lady fell apart, but in that moment on national news, she was more than fine. I could see it in her eyes.

Its hurricane season again. And in the five years following Katrina, Ike, and Rita, for many people I know, including myself, that has come to mean more vigilance and respect for the destructive nature of hurricanes. I like to think I have always had a great appreciation for the strength that churns into something almost supernatural in its ability to destroy. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. It seems I’ve had my own spiritual hurricane season of sorts this summer. I’m still sorting through the rubble, but when I think about the work that’s been started in me this summer, I can’t help but remember the look in that lady’s far away eyes, the sweet smile on her lips. Her certainty.

God’s torn down some walls in my heart in a mighty way this summer. Some of them were walls I put up intentionally with the hope of making life easier—or at least a little less painful. Some of them were walls I never even knew were there. It was almost as if the soft pliable parts of my heart, the permeable walls that were meant to let love in, had solidified without my awareness. And it was if I had just a small crack to let in the people and experiences I was pretty certain weren’t going to hurt me. But all of that’s changing. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is all or nothing with me and God. He knows better than I do that it has to be complete destruction with me. I don’t do well with minor remodeling. All of this has come at a great cost, but the reward has been even greater.

A couple of years ago I bought two Katrina Roses for the arbor in our garden. I liked the story behind this lovely pink climbing rose. A woman in New Orleans had this rose climbing on a fence in her own garden. After the ten feet of water that engulfed her property receeded, she began to take inventory of the damage. As time went on, she began to realize that she lost everything: her home, her belongings, her treasured garden. Like her property, she was devastated. But then this rose began to sprout little green buds. She waited hopefully and this rose began to flourish. And when it bloomed for the first time after the storm, it bloomed more beautifully and fully than it ever had before. Thousands of tiny pink blossoms. She just had to wait.

I was needing a good storm in my life to wipe the slate clean. To tear down walls. To give me a reason to bloom. To remind me that what looks like the end sometimes is really the beginning. To remind me what faith looks like. What hope looks like. What love looks like. I can see it all clearly now that He’s torn these walls down; love’s come like a butterfly on the tail of a hurricane: all fluttering lightness, transparent, weightless. Free.