Lightning Checks
In the summer after my junior year of high school, I saved up all my extra money and willingly went on a wilderness backpacking trip with the Young Life Organization. Certain it would be fun, and not at all considering the challenges of carrying a heavy pack and going up mountain trails for a week, I prepared.
I watched Bear Grills in Man vs. Wild, bought brand new hiking boots that matched my two friends going with me and some “cute exercise outfits” for the trip. Throw in a rain jacket (which I very much needed) and I was prepared. (All backpacking gear was provided by Young Life, thankfully).
I was about as prepared for that trip as I have been for the last two years of our ever changing paradigm of life. Or maybe I was about as prepared for that trip as I was adulthood in general, with TV shows, some outfits and unbroken-in “shoes” for walking this life.
It’s been on my mind recently because I have been thinking about the life storms’ we are all in.
On this trip, when it would storm (in high altitude Colorado summer it storms almost every afternoon) we would all get on our small rubber floor chairs and count off. Lightning is very dangerous in the mountains, so the counting was to make sure each one of us was still there and hadn’t collapsed from any indirect shock.
Sitting around in a circle with our legs folded on to the chairs, we would listen for thunder and then the first voice of our guide would calmly say “one” then perhaps the giggly frantic voice of a fellow teen would say “two” and it proceeded until the last guide would say “ten”.
We weren’t counting the minutes until the storm hit, we were just making sure we all made it through intact.
So this message is really about that, making sure we are all intact. The last few weeks for me and many I know have been quite turbulent in some already chaotic times. So I wanted to do a lightning check.
Are you okay? Are you still there? Are you being seen and heard?
It seems many are in the storms of life. I have many friends dealing with chronic illness and their initial hope is fatiguing in the wake of the long slow road to healing. Peoples’ family members are fighting, loved ones are passing on, people are grieving, friends’ cars getting smashed by drunk drivers… I won’t continue. It has been quite the light show for me and the ones who share their lives and personal journeys with me.
This is the stuff of life, but it feels like the thunder and lightning are a little closer and louder than before.
It isn’t all doom and gloom, though. In this part of Texas where I live, after a big storm passes the most unassuming and enchanting flower pops up out of the soil, taking me by surprise, rain lilies. They lie dormant in the soil until a good hard rain comes and then a few days after they make their short appearance in any open patch of grass they can find. This white gift awaits storms just to pop up and remind me that some gifts only come by way of a down pour.
Some things are only revealed after the thunder rolls, the lighting strikes and we purge our tears of rain from weary eyes. Then when the skies clear and we feel emptied and quiet, something we forgot, that was always there, pops up; beauty and wisdom stored deep within.
I invite you to join me in looking for the rain lilies in your own life and, if you have the capacity, doing a lightning check for your friends and loved ones. In doing so you will unite in these collective storms as a circle, as a community.
And if you need someone to hear your number called and know you’re still there, reach out. I am here. You are not alone, and the sun will break through, and the rain lilies will bloom for you too.
But it’s also okay to be in the storm and to just be counting to make sure your you still say your number. To make sure you’re still here.
“one”….