Code Red

I saw code yellow forecast for thunderstorms Thursday night into Friday and I winced. No, I rolled my eyes. It was a small thing but it concealed a big wound.

This last year has not been something I expected to experience, nor is it something I would recommend to others. Shortly after we moved to a fresh start in our village, something came to light in my family that required an immediate change of course, defense, and a clear message.

The ground started falling away under my feet like sand through an hourglass, all while I needed to stand strong in an unfixable, unwinnable situation. Yes, I had many of the tools and parts I needed in my hands, but no idea of how they fit together and when that timing would be right. What could I safely put down? What would I lose to the sand if I set it down?

I pulled back my work as wedding photographer, cancelled my ads at personal loss, and rallied around my little family. Then I spent months writing defenses and responses in Dutch, my second language, advocating for my family. Protecting, with what deftness and care I could bluntly muster, the most important part of my life.

As a family, we tried to move from the situation. We changed our church congregation and now attend church 90 minutes from home. We put our house on the market, and nearly accepted a job offer in Ireland.

We also applied for and followed a trajectory for a hearing. This hearing was scheduled at the end of June, on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year when the very port of hell seemed opened to weary the earth with its blast. At the last minute, that hearing was cancelled due to the heat, later to be rescheduled the end of August.

Another tool to hold, without the timing or the pieces needed to use it.

This end of August then. Friday in fact.

And at first, the weather warning prickled the back of my neck where the nerves send runners out to the 5 corners of the body. A jolt. I felt myself bracing against another tilt of my world where I would find myself sorted into a new precarious position with feet above my head. Would I figure it out before I fell?

Then I grounded myself back to the earth. This was, after all, a code yellow for a thunderstorm, not the apocalypse. Breathing deeply to recenter myself, I felt the welcome pull of gravity.

Because I had already learned you don’t survive sand slipping away by holding still. You push against it, you create, you order the chaos just like the oldest story I know. First, separate the light and the darkness. Then, fill the whole order and disorder with presence, with ruach. The chaos is not removed by presence, but it is formed and channeled into something usable. The oldest tool available.

That is why I am going eastward, with deliberate steps, to capture that bit where the old and the new still inhabit the same space. The first day on repeat.

And then a lightning flash, an indelible memory of a distant land. The earth hugged tightly in an embrace by the mountains and the air smelling like ozone and clarity, the deep red roses blooming on the trellis, as Tom and I trundled to the car to drive to the hospital.

Our youngest was born after a wild Rocky Mountain thunderstorm.

I think I can weather this storm, too. And maybe I will be reborn.