The Dawn Comes

While there’ve been many hurricanes in my lifetime, Providentially, I’ve only had to be on a first-name basis with a few of them. Just last year, I had an up close and personal encounter with Lee, the sneaky little brother who crept into my husband’s hometown on the coattails of his big sister Irene. Irene was predicted to hit New York City, but she failed to live up to her potential of destruction last fall. However, it was the effects of Lee that overflowed the usually placid Susquehanna River in New York and Pennsylvania. Called in to survey the damage as a part of the Salvation Army’s response team, I witnessed mile after mile of flooded homes and businesses, only blocks from my university and a stone’s throw from Mama Lena’s, the site of our first date.

We all remember Katrina, who took on New Orleans and her neighbors with a vengeance and forced them to their knees. Can it really be seven years since her unwelcome visit? For months, Larry was responsible to staff Salvation Army response teams in Louisiana and Mississippi, so even though miles away, Katrina’s path of devastation intersected with our path.

Fortunately for residents of Ohio, our state is generally not hit hard by hurricanes or earthquakes - we’re more prone to blizzards and flooding. We’ve also had killer tornados and a derecho or two. Yes, I had to look it up, and found that a derecho is a widespread, long-lived windstorm with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms.  The best known was the Ohio Fireworks Derecho, hitting hard on July 4, 1969 and  capsizing over 100 boats on Lake Erie as they waited for the fireworks to begin.

Yet now we Ohioans have gotten to know Hurricane Sandy, nicknamed Frankenstorm, who slowly made our acquaintance over the past few days. As the ancient maple in our backyard creaked and groaned, I tossed and turned through the night of October 29, 2012, my husband’s 62^nd birthday. I kept thinking, if only the dawn would come. If only we could get through the night. If only the sun would rise so we could determine the extent of the damage Hurricane Sandy brought to our homes and our families, and to the lives of those in the face of the storm.  Charles Wesley’s hymn echoed: “And are we yet alive, and see each other’s face?”

That’s the kind of night it was, with the swaying trees and the tenacious winds that disrupted sleep and threatened power failure even here in Ohio, hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the storm. A couple of days early for All Hallow’s Eve, the night was spooky enough for me, but it was nothing like the tempest our friends to the east were facing.

 Life lessons are many in the scenario of disaster, but two particularly clamor for my attention. The first is the absolute helplessness that’s found in the center of the storm. One newscast interviewed a small enclave of New Yorkers on the afternoon of the 29^th, who with much bravado and misplaced courage, chose to disregard evacuation orders and remained in their homes. By midnight, as the waters rose outside their windows, they were desperate for rescue, unable to battle Sandy any longer. It was time to retreat.

Yet along with the helplessness experienced at the moment of disaster, the dawn still comes. Clouded or brightly shining, the sun rises again. What is terrorizing in the dark of night can be faced in the light of daybreak.  Even the wreckage from the storm.

I appreciate what Shauna Niequist tells us in Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way: “We sometimes choose the most locked up, dark versions of the story, but what a good friend does is turn on the lights, open the window, and remind us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story.” When the story of disaster is told, here’s praying that the utter helplessness faced by her prey will be coupled with tales of unexpected light, the hand of a friend, and the dawn of a new day.