The morning following Hurricane Ike, my husband and I drove around our neighborhood surveying the damage. As we weaved through streets avoiding downed power lines and high water, we found windows blown out of hospitals, roofs torn off buildings, and billboards lying in the middle of parking lots. Fences were down and tree limbs were everywhere. We turned into our subdivision and saw neighbors we've never seen before --raking, sweeping, and cleaning up in the aftermath. There was a sense of energy--we survived and we were all still here.
When we reached our home, we were thankful to discover our property escaped serious damage. In particular, we were relieved to find two thirty-foot oak trees still standing--not uprooted and repositioned on our house. As we stood in the front yard, I looked up and noticed something interesting. Although the streets were covered with fallen leaves, many more were still on trees. How in the world did a leaf survive the storm? The scientific response to that question is unnecessary. The answer that immediately comes to mind is, "Resiliency!"
God created leaves to be resilient--within their DNA, is their capacity to weather storms! That observation alone gave me a sense of hope that if a leaf was built to withstand 110-mile per hour winds, how much more was placed within me to withstand the storms that come to my life?
Storms are inevitable. Although it was 25 years since a storm of the magnitude of Ike hit Galveston and Houston, we knew that it would eventually come. Like natural disasters, health storms, family storms, school storms, relationship storms, parenting storms, career storms, or financial storms--are a part of life and we all encounter them at different points in our personal journey.
The good news is that God put something in each of us that makes us resilient and prone to survival. He placed something in our spiritual DNA that makes us much stronger than any storm -- no matter how furious the winds or relentless the rains. We were built to take it and built to make it. Like a leaf, your storm may throw you from side-to-side, but in the end you will survive and bring grace and beauty to the world you live in.
Posted By: Dr. Carolyn Clansy Miller
Thursday, September 25th 2008 at 4:40PM
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