This week's Theme: Through The Storm
Day 1: Yet I have hope
I had never seen a blizzard before. For several years the city I had adopted as home had seen mostly moderate winters. Of course to someone from a tropical climate, even “moderate” generally meant a temperature difference of 30-60 degrees below the lowest temperature I had ever experienced or even imagined.
But for the most part, significant snowfall rarely exceeded 5 inches (12.7 centimeters). Until the blizzard came that year.
In anticipation of the snow, I prepared to spend the night at work. This was a “standing” requirement in weather-related or other emergency conditions for anyone trained in my company’s emergency protocols in a past or current position.
A handful of times throughout the years, I had spent the night alongside colleagues, completing whatever supportive tasks were necessary—answering phones, distributing sandwiches and coffee, replenishing supplies— pausing only for short snatches of sleep on cots brought in from our emergency storerooms.
This time, though, the pace was relentless. With snowfall totals quickly breaking long-standing records, we had little time for rest, as we fought to help the company meet the challenges of the tempest raging outside.
By the time I left the building and stumbled onto the street the next morning, I was red-eyed and exhausted. But the real ordeal was just beginning.
I was not prepared for the conditions I found once I left the shelter of the building. Although I was in the middle of a main city area, there was no sign of clearing, and the streets were covered with piles of falling and drifting snow. I was to learn later that the snow ploughs and city resources could not keep pace with the demands of the extreme weather conditions.
I had thought I would take a cab home—the pre-rideshare-era conveyances were usually plentiful in this busy business hub, and after all, it was still very early in the morning. But I quickly realized that no taxi would be making its way through the mountains of un-ploughed snow on the surrounding streets.
I usually walked the 20-minute route to and from work, but today, walking was completely out of the question. And there was no direct bus route to my home, even if road transportation were not at a standstill. I did not know what to do.
I finally decided to make my way towards the subway, hoping I would at least get closer to ploughed streets that could eventually take me to my neighborhood. The closest subway station was less than five minutes away on a normal day, but this day was far from normal.
Battling wind and blowing snow, I fought through the elements—face stinging, eyes watering, nose burning; wet snow soaking me to the bone as I trudged painfully through mounds and drifts that rose above my knees. And yet my biggest struggle was not the physical—it was the strange sensation of “lostness” I felt. I had not expected such a startling and drastic shift in the landscape—such unfamiliarity in the midst of the familiar—and the sense of complete disorientation it brought.
I don’t remember all the details of how I finally made it home—it merges in my mind—as memories often do—with other “stuck” experiences—long, grueling hours of waiting, rushing, bumping, surging forward only to be thrust backwards—and after all that, spurts, stops, lifetimes of claustrophobic pauses in dark and endless tunnels.
As I recall this experience, I am struck by the fact that not all blizzards are in the natural weather sphere. I think about the members of my community—friends in the mid-west, in Canada, and in other northern regions and countries— who quite often face literal mounds of snow and ice—who brave weather conditions that dwarf my “puny” blizzard. And I think of others in regions that have never seen one flake fall from the sky.
But I daresay that nearly, if not all of us, can relate to the blinding blizzard forces of life that leave us struggling through mounting piles and drifts, with howling winds stinging our face, and deep, steeping chill penetrating our very bones. Nearly all of us have suddenly found ourselves in twilight terrain that distorts our “proven”, and reconfigures our familiar into strange, freakish, unnerving, disorienting patterns.
But even as we struggle to make sense of the confusing, the upending, the jumbling, and the redefining—in our individual lives and in the worlds beyond us; even as we persevere through long, grueling hours of waiting, rushing, bumping, surging forward only to be thrust backwards; even as we we pray through the spurts, stops, and lifetimes of claustrophobic pauses in dark and endless tunnels, we push forward towards home. Even when deep in our spirit we groan, “It is winter... and has been for ever so long" (C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe), we can rise above the bitterness and the gall.
For deep in the human spirit is carved the resilience—the hope that is grounded in the promise and its source:
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness (Lamentations 3:19, 21-23).
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