STORM WATCH

As I sit here writing, I listen for the storm sirens: high chance of tornadoes in the forecast today. This morning's clear, sunny sky has transformed into something dark and ominous. Wind whips the trees, scatters papers across campus, steals caps.

I hope the youngest and I make it home before the storm breaks. I don't like driving in severe weather...

...but I love storms.

I grew up in a beautiful 100+-year-old farmhouse. We didn't have internet, because the internet hadn't been invented yet. We didn't have TV, either. Yes, TV had been invented; but when our old cabinet TV quit working, Dad hauled it out to his workshop and let us kids "fix" it, and that was the end of that. We didn't have cellphones. Cellphones were imaginary tools in the minds of scriptwriters for StarTrek and James Bond films.

So, when we woke up on a misty, moisty, gray kind of morning, we didn't worry about sinister weather reports forecasting hail and tornadoes. Instead, Dad fed and milked the cow. Mom fried bacon and eggs and started the laundry. We kids got dressed for school or, if it was the weekend or summer break, we tackled chores or sneaked back to bed with a library book.

And if the sky grew dark as Mordor and the wind picked up, if lightning sizzled and thunder crashed nearby and rain pelted the roof like bullets, then...

...we did not log onto weather.com, or turn on the TV, or check our cellphones.

Instead, when the weather grew particularly hurly-burly, Mom would say, "Let's go sit on the porch and watch the storm!"

Sitting on the porch swing with Mom, our skin prickling and the hair on our arms standing on end, the wind whipping the trees into a dervish, covering our ears and counting the seconds between FLASH! and CRASH!, damp from the rain that blasted around the edge of the roof...

...watching the storm, not the storm report...

I don't know if I have ever felt more alive than I did sitting on the porch swing as a child, wide-eyed and hair on end, watching the storm. It was terrifying, electrifying, invigorating, magical.

Yes, there were times when Mom and Dad, on some mysterious cue, rushed us all to the basement. But even when we gallomped hurriedly down the stairs into the cool mustiness of down below - Dad carried a kerosene lantern to light our steps, when the power went out - even then, I don't remember feeling afraid, only a thrill of excitement and anticipation.

William Cowper, in one of my very favorite hymns, writes these words: "God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform; he plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm."

Is that what I was looking for, waiting for, as I sat wet and charged with excitement on the front porch swing or huddled with baited breath in the damp shadows of the basement? Perhaps the spine-tingling thrill that drew me outside into the blasting storm was not the storm after all, but the Someone behind the storm.

His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. - Nahum 1:3b