So, things aren’t going that well. It’s been one of those days, months, years when you feel like a hurricane has hit your heart. High winds are blowing through your sense of well-being while heavy rains are washing away your confidence and peace. It feels unsafe, off balance, frightening. Should you hide your heart away in an inner room and hope the roof isn’t torn off by the storm?
It seldom does any good to rage at a storm. It may feel good to yell a little but it doesn’t stop those howling winds. It doesn’t help much to hide yourself away either. If you want a life that has sunshine, eventually you have to come back out into the light of day. But what else can you do? When the storm roars you cannot ignore it. Yes, hurricanes of the heart come and they often leave behind a landscape bleak with washed away dreams and the need for brand new starts.
That is the bad news. The good news is that there is another factor at work in all this. It is the opportunity that lies in the aftermath of tragedy, both yours and mine. In 1995, Hurricane Katrina all but wiped out the city of New Orleans. Despite the warnings to evacuate, many were caught unaware in Katrina’s powerful backlash. Turns out it was one of the five most powerful hurricanes in the history of the United States. That’s how it happens sometimes. You think a standard hurricane is coming through town and the next thing you know your whole world is underwater.
However there was an unexpected side effect to the storm. It was estimated that around 21 billion board feet of wood were left lying on the forest floors from Texas to Alabama following Katrina’s deadly debut. While that sounds like exceptionally bad news, it was actually promising news. Someone recognized that the wood from the fallen trees could build enough homes to fill a medium sized city. Imagine that. The very thing needed to rebuild their lives after the storm was provided at least partially by the storm itself. The biggest challenge was finding the resources to get the wood to market before it rotted on the forest floor or contributed to a forest fire.
Certainly the storms in our lives have left some fallen trees behind. We have no time to lose; we need to get that lumber and start building. Maybe our pain can be turned into a bridge that connects us to others who have been through hard times. There is an incredible opportunity to find what we need in the middle of what we have lost. But if we wait too long, what could be used as resources may just become another part of a littered landscape.
It is time to script a new chapter in your life built out of your leftover pain. Don’t waste another minute. Grab your hammer, sharpen your saw and get started. There is hope and healing ahead.
(Parts of this blog are from the introduction to When Jesus Shows Up)