Our Beautiful Storms

Nature has a way of mimicking what we feel in life.  As we received some incremental weather last night, I thought of the similarities in how our emotions play out.   Often in our lives, we see an emotional storm brewing and we pray that it won't come.   We feel the winds of change start to race against the landscape and we feel like they could easily blow us over.   Often, we are even surprised by this emotional storm.  We may have been experiencing some great feeling weather just days before.   And as we start to feel the changes coming and start to get a sense of what might come to pass, we feel an old, familiar anxiety creep in.

Almost inevitably, the storm hits and sometimes, it hits hard.   What were once dry roads along our journey feel slippery with ice and snow now.   We knew it was coming and now that this new cold environment is here, it feels awkward in a way.  We have to use tools to sift through the snow to keep at our regular lives.  Nothing seems as easy or as familiar as what once was.

But this morning, I saw this storm in a completely different way.   I saw it's beauty, its absolute utter beauty.   Yes, it is colder and everything is frozen but maybe that old environment needed a fresh blanket of snow, full of sparkles and grandeur.  

As I stared at the trees in my backyard and saw the inches of precipitation stacked on their branches, I felt a quiet peace come over me knowing that this storm had not truly ruined my backyard.  If anything, it enhanced its beauty.  Such is the storms of our lives.   Our negative anticipation and our anxiety filled shock are always worse than what actually happens.   We always make it through and afterward, we have a beautiful scene to behold.  

So, my remembering today is about enjoying my emotional storms in their entirety.   Enjoying the build up, not listening to others who are dreading theirs, watching the beauty in each moment as it comes, realizing that it is never as bad as I could make it with my thoughts, and most important, realizing that the relief is coming.   In fact, it is already here if I stay present with what I am in.