Battered by Wind

It’s the anniversary of 9/11 and the world-shattering consequences that so many of us remember, whether it was the images that played over and over on television, or the talk of what our world was coming to.

I’d been at Bible Study that morning and heard the news on the way home. Sarah, who was home from school with a bad headache, had seen the news as it played over and over. Not an enjoyable way to celebrate her 16th birthday.

We watched the startling pictures on the screen once together as she rested tearfully on the couch. I turned off the television and announced we were going out for ice cream and we could celebrate with friends on another day. She needed a distraction, not that she or anyone could forget. We would learn later that one of our other daughter’s friends had been scheduled to be at the Tower for a meeting that morning, but he’d slept through his alarm. Thankfully.

 
Recently I had reason to watch a video that was circulating on Facebook, an anniversary of the tornado in 1979.

At the time, my husband and I were living in Waterloo region with our two young children, who were 3 years and 6 months. We learned that the tornado had taken out homes, barns, power lines and trees in Oxford County. Where I grew up, and where my parents and two youngest siblings still lived.

When we learned of it, we tried calling but couldn’t get through, likely because the power was out. My husband said we needed to go and check on them, and so we drove out to see trees fallen across roads and people already at work clearing the road.

My parents and younger siblings were shaken but otherwise unharmed. The barn had lost its entire upper story and trees in the yard looked like battered toothpicks.

I can't recall exactly what my parents said, but they knew something was eerie when the storm was still as they sat eating their evening dinner. My parents each grabbed a teen and headed for the basement of our farm home and made it just as the house got a good shaking.

Talk about the force of winds that picked up a barn door that had taken eight men to hang, as it was flung about like something light. The tornado had hit the barn first.

Neighbours lost home and barn but fortunately none were killed, though there were some injuries. The video spoke of emergency services and a community supporting each other. The effects of the tornado changed some lives significantly. Homes and barns can be rebuilt while the human spirit needs to work through the losses such a storm inflicts. And they came through it, emerging on the other side changed and perhaps stronger.

I pondered this phenomenon and wrote about it some time ago, how the human spirit emerges in such a situation, as it also must have following the 9/11 attack. Different forces at work and how people make it through, sometimes leaving us with more questions.

We Don’t Know the Storm

We don’t reckon the damage done until it passes

and all the storm took with it

boards and rafters, roofs and feathers

but more than that   lives changed

by that one moment

or what seemed like one moment

when things broke loose in the wind and rain

when it scattered boards and roofs like children’s toys

we hurried to the cellar for safety,

prayed while it shook the house

asking God to keep us safe

and now we live with ever after and what if’s

what if we’d known better what God and the storm could do

what God, after the storm, can do

 


Carolyn Wilker is an author, editor and storyteller from southwestern Ontario.
https://www.storygal.ca/
https://www.carolynwilker.ca/ 

Re-charged Consciousness - Smith Meyer

How easy it is to take life for granted and how quickly our perspective can change. The sudden death of a loved one can do that. So can a tragic accident that forever changes the abilities of an active, intelligent person. Even if it doesn’t happen to us, but is someone we know well, for awhile, we are more aware of the fragility of life and health. Earthquakes, tsunamis, memorable events like 9/11, even if they happen a half a world away, make us stop and think, “What would it be like if that happened to us?”

Sunday evening the skies above our town churned with layers of white, black and blacker clouds. I watched from our deck as here and there, from the blacker ones, tails formed and threatened to descend. I was ready, should those funnels really get it together in earnest, to run for the basement. It wasn’t long until we heard that a tornado did touch down and wreak havoc, demolishing the centre of Goderich, less than an hour away from our home.
We have extended family members who live in that town, and we wondered if they had been affected. We later learned they were safe. Another couple we know were there with their grandchildren. Had their little granddaughter not been in such a hurry to get her promised Timbits, they may still have been down on the beach when the storm hit. As time goes on (it happens anytime there is a natural disaster) there will be many such stories of near misses or providential moves at just the right time. Those times feel like small miracles or mercies—what if we hadn’t? is often asked. For the family of the only casualty, the quandary will be “if only.”

Three days later, I sit in the basement writing this entry, because after Sunday’s happening, our local station has been super-careful to keep the severe weather watch and warnings running across the bottom of the tv screen—it’s been doing that all afternoon. And because of my heightened awareness of what could happen if we ignore those warnings, I choose to play it safe and do my work in the basement instead of upstairs with one eye toward the west.

With communication so advanced, we hear and see video footage of natural tragedies almost as soon as they happen all over the world. We are aware of the pain and suffering of the people involved. We let ourselves feel their pain for awhile and maybe even make a donation to help them. The closer to us, the more we become involved, the more conscious we are that it could happen to us. I used to struggle with my ability to forget so quickly. Perhaps we cannot always live in that kind of heightened awareness, but we can learn from those times.
While thinking through the happenings of the past few days, I was reminded of Mr. Simmonds who taught a few evening classes I took at Toronto Bible College many years ago. He had the class all note our greatest fear, then our assignment was to write a composition about what we would do if that happened—how we would face it and get through it. That exercise helped us, as he put it, “Turn around and face our fear instead of fleeing from it.”

That exercise assisted me many times in life, to do just that. It helped me many years later when one of those greatest fears I had noted did happen—the love of my life died. Although at the news that it probably would happen, I was tempted to flee from it, I was able to turn and face it head on. However his death had a more lasting effect. Somehow, since then, it’s easier to believe that it could happen to me or to ones I love. Rather than making me paranoid and fearful, it has done the opposite.

Although I take precautions (like sitting in the basement in threatening weather) a deep contentment and peace is present even in threatening circumstances because l know that my times are in the hands of the One who planned my life in the beginning. It’s wise to live as well as we can and take precautions, but it’s also wise to take risks if necessary. However there is only so much one can do to determine the outcome of any circumstance in life. How grateful I am that Mr. Simmonds set me on the right track so long ago.

www.ruthsmithmeyer.com