Bracing for Impact

Cathy Maziarz tunes you into The Weather Channel Radar (of her life) as a massive blob of dark orange and red continue to sweep across her location.

It is 3 o'clock on Friday morning. I am barefoot in my flamingo pjs as I race out of our sleeping house and into a raging storm. Sheets of rain fall from a dark angry sky as the wind swirls tossing tree limbs across the farm’s pastures. Halfway across the back pasture, I find what I am looking for, the patio umbrella pegged against a fence post. I race against the wind, knowing full well, that within minutes it will be spiraling upward. Between flashes of lighting, I am struggling to take a small metal pin out of the umbrella pole, a pin to release the lifted sails of my small ship at sea.

My right hand fumbles with the slippery metal as my left fights to hold on to the umbrella, a tug-of-war match with the wind. I can’t let go … if I do, the umbrella is likely to fly toward the house, a deadly projectile that could hit the house windows or the huddled cattle a few yards away. Like the power of wind hitting the sail of a ship, the engine to move it forward, this power had picked up the solid wooden table that the umbrella had been attached to, lifting it out of the patio and into the pasture.

As the wind howled around me, increasing its power, I braced for the Impact. With all my might I held on, knowing that if it had the power to lift a solid wood table, it could lift me. I whispered a prayer and the metal pin slipped free, allowing the sails to fall, taking away the medium for the wind’s power. As my toes dug into the mud and slippery grass, I raced back to the safety of the house with my vessel in tow.

As I stood in the garage, wringing out my pjs and shivering from the cold of the sky’s angry rain, I thought of how appropriate it was that this had occurred… for as of the past month I had been dealing with this weather pattern, figuratively. The Weather Channel Radar (of my life) had a massive blob of dark orange and red that continued to sweep across my location.

One recent bleep … my husband and I just found out that we were going to have to leave the home that we had been living in for the past eight years of our lives. A promise that had been made to us for life on a piece of beautiful farmland and a custom-built log home … had been broken. The roots that we had planted, had just been uplifted like that umbrella. Another bleep ... My brother had just had his second child, a sweet baby girl, and a week later, his wife left him. These were just a few of the dark red that had been sweeping across the radar.

Now wrapped in dry towels, I am sitting on the edge of the bathtub. My elbows propped on my knees, as I hold my head in my hands. I wonder when the storms will stop … when it will turn green on the radar … and then finally to no color. I lift my head and hear God whisper, “I am here.”

He is here.

He is that anchor that will hold me fast when the storm rages and the winds try to lift me away. He is my rock, my fortress, my stronghold. There will be more storms, I know this. I will not run from them … I will brace for the impact and hold on to my anchor.

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It is 5 AM now. I am on my computer writing lesson plans for the upcoming school year. My cellphone vibrates … it's my brother. He is supposed to be in Louisiana visiting his oldest son; he had flown out yesterday afternoon. I brace for the impact.

I pick up, “Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” he replies. I haven’t made it to Louisiana. My flight is grounded in Atlanta. We went through some terrible storms.”

I pause and then at the same time we both laugh. I reply, “Yeah, we seem to be getting a lot of those lately.”

I can see my brother smiling through the phone … as his body stands tall. We have this hope, this joy with the Lord, and we will hold strong and brace for the impacts—for surely more storms will come. Without the storms of life, we would never truly see the beauty of the next morning … how the sky is more brilliant, and the sun seems to shine brighter.

Click to tweet:
We have this hope, this joy with the Lord, and we will hold strong and brace for the impacts—for surely more storms will come. #CatholicMom

It is 8 AM and the sun has regained its place on the throne.

Dear Lord,

May I continue to hold fast to you … my anchor … my rock. As I brace for the impact, my hope is in you alone.

I love you, Lord, my strength, Lord, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, my saving horn, my stronghold! (Psalm 18:2-3)

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