What a difference a day makes.

So never posted to my blog from my phone by Lantern light. The last time I went this long without power was the "No Name storm" 1991. There were t-shirts we sold at Eckerd that said,"I survived the No Name storm and had a map with it's path across the southeast US. The person that I lived with back then and I went more than 3 days without power and after the 3rd night of coming home after 12 hour days working he called the power company and I laugh now picturing the image of him and I calling from the wall phone in our kitchen and he said not so kindly to the person on the phone that he was getting frustrated with not having power every night when we got home and just had to look up the phone number in the phone book for the blanking power company like Benjamin Franklin by candlelight.  I don't remember after the power was back on like that night.
God has a funny way of shining a light on important things and sometimes he has to turn off the lights for us to see. Last week before the storm my mind was having it's own tropical depression but a few visits with a couple doctors who are worth their weight in gold and I was ready to weather the storm. I know most don't want to know how scared others were and don't want to admit to themselves how real Irma was. But the few days prior to that to me was worse. I know worse than a tree falling on the house that didn't come through and the hours of sitting on the floor in the hallway praying that the guys on the weather were right before our power went off and said the worst should pass us by midnight. As I listened to my clock chime though the sound of the wind and rain thinking we just have to hold on for another hour, ok maybe one more hour, ok may be one more. That feeling for those who have never experienced it my friend is what it feels like when a person is having a panic attack. It is not the wind and rain but the quiet moment in my head trying to say the Lord's prayer for the 50th time and forgetting the words. Trying to keep your self together when the world around you is blowing by. There are a few events in life that I felt like I at least deserve a t-shirt for getting through and for the last two weeks I deserve 2.  The panic like the storm has passed and my mind is as peaceful as the weather today.  I am a thankful person because those moments of anguish lead to peace and tonight my friends I can say all the words to the Lord's prayer in order and will rest for tomorrow brings new challenges to all of us. Not all of them have a name or date to be remembered by. Some are just a day in the life of me. Our Father who art in heaven...

Bringing back balance

I know it has been a while since I have written anything here. I think of things but not sure what to say. Well these last few days Anxiety has been high on my list of things I have been thinking about. Lots of things have been getting to me but there is this looming hurricane Irma out there slowly moving through the Straits of Florida hanging out off the coast of Cuba. Just putzing along at about 6 miles per hour. At this rate Irma isn't going to get here until Monday and right now those that forecast things like this expect that we should start to see conditions diminish tomorrow afternoon but it will be tomorrow night or early Monday morning before we get the worst of it. This is much slower than she was cruising along at earlier this week which keeps pushing out the inevitable of Irma making landfall somewhere in Florida unless she does what I want and keeps heading west. I hear Mexico is beautiful this time of the year. No, I truly don't wish her wrath on anyone and well especially not us. There is part of me that says you know we have had a good run. More than 50 years without a major hurricane hitting the Tampa Bay area so if we are due I hope we are prepared.

So with everything closed and most people hunkered down. It has given me some time to sit and think. While Princess and I were out in the back yard tonight and I thought how the wind and the sky remind me of when I was younger probably about 1980 and we had some storms that were pretty bad and people prepared for. Since we grew up on the beach we picked up the yard. Put down the storm shutters and rode out the storm and then went out to see what happened afterwards. I remember before one storm sitting out on the dock across the street from our house and watching people anchor their sailboats out in the bay to protect them from hitting into the seawall or dock and some even riding storms out on a boat. My brother did a few times on the fishing boat he worked on. Him and the owner's son spent the night on the boat and let out the lines as the tide rose and kept the boat from hitting into the dock.

Even back then I was always thinking about how things work and that how hurricanes are just Mother Nature's way of bringing balance back to the warm waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. The hurricane gets it's energy from the warm water and as it reaches cooler water it looses strength. If the water didn't cool off then neither would the air and it would just be hot year round and algae blooms like Red Tide would just get worse each year. As strange as it seems we need the hurricanes. Tonight I was thinking how the storm brings a balance back to nature and maybe that includes us. The human beings of the world that have to control everything are reminded that we have minimal control of anything. One of the thoughts I had was about how anxious I have been lately worrying about things I can't control and worrying that I can't control them. So I said a little prayer tonight to Mother Nature that she does have control and that I am prepared to ride out the storm and will do it knowing that maybe she is bringing balance back to me as well as the water temperature in the Gulf.
Surprisingly I felt better afterwards and thought it may be so. Maybe we all need the barometric pressure to drop and the wind and rain to remind us that family and friends are important and everything else can be replaced. To all my friends and family that are hunkered down at home I am praying that all of us come through this experience a little more balanced and that we all remember the things that are important are not things at all. Amen.