Storms

I wish I had had my camera last night.  There was an awesome storm that moved through town.  We could see the dark clouds, the lightning, even smell the rain.  The winds picked up.  The temperature dropped.  Then, the rains came.  It was beautiful!

Being a self-proclaimed Oklahoma native, I recently told my mother-in-love that one of the things I missed during the Spring season was the storms!  The whole scenes that proceed the main event of a storm just do something to me!  I have secretly and now publicly stated that I could easily be a storm-chaser!

We had just picked Libby up from a birthday party.  We ran to the van through a light rain shower.  Minutes later, the skies opened and the rains fell.  Despite it being early evening the skies were black.  On every direction all we could see was black, rain, lightning, wind.  Even with the windshield wipers adjusted to full speed, we could barely see out the front window.

As my blood pressure elevated loving this most unexpected storm, my sweet Libby was ... freaking out!  She doesn't remember storms like I do.  Since this is not so common in Vienna, this was new and frightening.  She kept asking us if rocks were gonna fall from the sky or if the lightning was going to hit our van.

One of the things we have been doing as a family in the last few weeks to help fight a spirit of bickering between the girls or put fear and stress in it's place is to begin singing.  It's kind of comical, actually.  I hear Libby raising her voice to precious Parker and I intervene with ... "OK Libby ... let's start singing." She looks at me like I'm a crazy person, listens to my very off-key voice sing a few bars of a praise song and before I know it she is joining in on the chorus.  This has been our routine ... and go figure --- it has worked!

Now, back to the van ... and Libby's fear.  Funny how God uses our kids to teach us ... and give wisdom.  Through her fear she said, "OK guys ... let's start singing."  We did.  We sang at the top of our voices.

As we approached the bridge that crosses over into the 2nd district, near our home, we saw the tiniest ray of light struggling to reveal itself through the storm.  Without any wise planning on my part, Addison begins to sing "Praise You in the Storm" by Casting Crowns.