Originally posted on Facebook HERE
My fear of storms has been fairly well documented in these posts over the years. Whether that is an innate fear I was born with, or a fear I developed on my own based on the knowledge that I’d have a brother if he hadn’t been hit by lightening and killed while golfing at a young age (a couple years before I was born) is up for debate I guess. Maybe both. But I don’t like storms at all. Nobody gets through life without enduring them, though. Both physically and mentally. In general, storms seem to have three parts. At least the really big ones. There’s the “calm before the storm” we’re all familiar with. It can be really eerie. No wind. Quiet. Even if you didn’t already know there was a storm coming, you can feel it. Gives you a brief warning that you can take advantage of to get to cover and prepare yourself. Then it hits, and when a storm hits nothing is in your control anymore. Everything is in limbo. A bad enough storm can ruin everything you own, and even take your life. But once we weather the storm there’s a period that doesn’t get talked about a lot. There’s the calm AFTER the storm. At some point the storm starts to wind down and you can get a glimpse of it… last night’s storms here totally died down only to start back up again a few hours later, but eventually the storm ends. And there is the calm after the storm where, if you survived it – you can access the damage, fix what needs fixing, adjust and move on. But you’re not quite the same person because now you’ve weathered the storm. And storms are a part of life. Not just the ones Mother Nature provides, either. We can get blindsided with a job change or a breakup we weren’t expecting. We will all lose people, pets, and things we love. We can create our own storms as well, which is what I’m going through right now. Just because a storm was created under your own volition doesn’t mean it’ll feel any different once you’re in it. Everything is everywhere and you’re in the eye of the hurricane just trying to hang on to whatever you can. The older we get, the more storms we endure, the more we know and understand that whatever life dishes out – if we survive it – there will be calm after the storm. In today’s calm, after the physical storm, I can also start to see the calm to come in my professional life as well. And eventually, it’ll be business as usual. Doing what I love with people I love spending time with. And when we endure storms together, the bonds between us grow as well. Enjoy the calm after the storm today. You might have damage control and/or cleanup to deal with, but you survived. And with every storm we survive, we grow.
