I've had two major miracles come into my life. As of last week, the count increased to three. Unlike the previous two, however, this one affected a much larger number of people outside my very mere self.
Her name was Hurricane Irma. In September of 2017, she was forecast to be, as late in the game as a few minutes before landfall, a direct hit on Tampa Bay along the west coast of Florida. As she marched north, she first made landfall in the Florida Keys and then just south of Naples, Florida. Still south of Tampa Bay but not by much, she wobbled a wee bit. In response to this wobble, the local meteorologists tempered all hope of reprieve from Irma's wrath as they said, in the gravest of tones, that all hurricanes wobble and this wobble didn't at all mean that Irma was changing her mind about targeting Tampa Bay.
While the gravest of tones continued on the continuous weather coverage on all of the major networks, Irma wobbled and refrained from wobbling back. She marched up Interstate 75, just east of Tampa Bay, as if she were evacuating the state along the same path that so many Floridians had taken to escape her over the previous three days. As a result of her shift in attitude and action, Tampa Bay suffered only 80-90 mph winds (and limited storm surge) rather than the 110+ mph winds that were expected from a Category 2 or Category 3 version of Irma.
Good Riddance Irma! Coincidentally, when Irma made her second landfall in Florida, after devastating the Florida Keys, her radar image looked like this:
It's beyond disconcerting for a Hurricane to "smile" while barreling into your home, community, and life. But here, Irma seemed to be giving Tampa Bay a little bit of a hint about her subsequent behavior.
In the following day's headlines, the local paper called Irma's sudden shift "Lucky". After watching Irma, as one of the strongest and biggest storms in Atlantic history, wreak havoc across the Caribbean and over the Florida Keys for over a week, I would call it more than lucky. The scientific explanation of how three highly unlikely but plausible events contributed to the diversion of Irma from her broadly forecasted direct hit on Tampa Bay was a little implausible. I prefer to call what I saw for what it is -- A Miracle, in spite of the scientist inside of me that would like to dream up a proper explanation for it all like so many others would and have done.
Tampa Bay had prepared to wake up on a Monday morning in a post-Irma reality, and walk outside to a new normal, a landscape that was "unfamiliar", a euphemism used by the news media and others for an area largely flattened and re-arranged by a nasty Atlantic hurricane. Instead, Tampa Bay awoke to widespread power outages and a big mess, which were both immense blessings given the range of options posed by the ominous forecast of the preceding few days.
Preparations for the oncoming winds and the anticipated floods to be delivered by Irma had been intense: Installing storm shutters, filling and placing sandbags, and tying down or moving indoors anything that could be moved by 100+ mph winds took a lot of physical labor. But, the hardest part of the preparation for me was packing up the car with the "Near and Dear" things. In the middle of deciding what to put in the limited available space, I sat down with tears in my eyes and typed "Psalm of the Day" into my laptop, to which ever reliable Google responded with the following:
"And call for help when you’re in trouble—
I’ll help you, and you’ll honor me." (Psalm 50:15)
Here was yet another reason to trade the word "Lucky" in for "Miraculous". After the storm, as I watched our neighbors and friends clean up yards, fences, and debris at blazingly fast speeds, as the power company restored power with comparable quickness, I found life returning to normal so quickly that it was easy to forget the immense gift that had just been granted. Because I had no answers to why Tampa Bay was spared over the Florida Keys or Barbuda or the Virgin Islands or any number of other communities that are now forced into the painful process of post-hurricane rebuilding, I've kept largely quiet about the "Luck" God gave to Tampa Bay. But, I have also resisted the temptation to return to life as normal as if Irma and her wobble had never happened.
That leaves me in a little bit of a predicament. How do I honor Him after this journey I've just completed with such an unwelcome companion as Irma? As is typical for me, I don't have an enormously insightful answer to this spiritual question. But, as seems to coincide with the miracles and major events in my life, my heart has once again opened wide to the pain and the suffering that weighs down our modern world. When I am in a more normal space, I have some sort of complicated psychological border wall erected in my psyche so that I can read the news and be aware of what's going on in the world without falling into despondence and depression.
For now, though, that wall has disappeared and many of the events of the world are finding a place both in my mind and in my heart. Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Harvey and their massive swatches of destruction. The raging wildfires in the West. The insane crisis with North Korea. The persecuted Rohingya in Myanmar. The drug-resistant malaria outbreak in Asia. The rudeness and coldness in my daily life. The list goes on and on and on.
Much of what was bouncing off of me and staying in my head rather than infiltrating my heart and spirit is now flooding into my heart like its own hurricane-induced storm surge. My heart has opened wide and for better or for worse, I am carrying sadness for far more crises and suffering than my usual, very limited capacity.
My heart is opened wide to whatever and wherever God may lead me next. And, my opened heart cries for all the pain in the world. Sighs with suffering. Prays for change. Begs for mercy. Hopes for more.
Miracles.
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