Surviving the Storm

Last night brought a storm like the ones that were promised when talk began about El Nino months ago.  Wind whipped around the house, howling as it tossed our two large redwood trees back and forth in a frenzied dance. Pounding rain assaulted our windows, at times sounding like a fire hose had been turned on them.

Somehow my husband, children, and I managed to fall asleep to the sound of this wicked battle being waged outside our home.  When we awoke this morning, we found the world bathed in calm.  Pale sunlight seeped between the gray clouds that still lingered, cautioning us that another battle could be on its way.  Puddles of water littered the yard, reminders of last night's assault.  Other than that, everything appeared once again as it always had.  Everything was still.

Looking out our bedroom window, my eyes immediately were drawn to the two redwood trees by the back fence.  I had worried last night that one, or both, would come down during the violent dance forced upon them by the wind. I feared that they had been weakened by the last four years of drought and that the buckets of rain that had fallen in such a short amount of time had deprived them of firm ground in which to stand.  But there they stood. Tall. Upright. Proud.  They stood as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred just hours before.

I suppose nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.  Wild storms are a part of nature and are to be expected. Rain is going to fall.  Winds are going to howl and lash at everything in their path.  Storms come. 

But they also go. 

When the next storm comes - and come it will - I will think of those trees, relentlessly battered by wind and rain.  I will picture them standing still and strong in the morning light.  And I will hold on, firm in the knowledge that this storm too will pass.