When Hurricane Idalia came roaring through the Big Bend of Florida with a projected path that came directly over our island community, we watched carefully and made the necessary preparations. Understanding that Florida and Georgia would absorb the worst of the energy, our expectation was that Idalia would weaken to a tropical storm as she visited our neighborhood, and that is exactly what happened. Fortunately for us, the storm shifted slightly to the west and the winds weren’t as strong as they could have otherwise been, but we were still subjected to hours of steady winds with occasional gusts that were strong enough to snap limbs and drop a few trees. As I mentioned last week, some were without power for 60 hours, but within a few days of Idalia’s passage, most of the primary storm debris was cleaned up and it was almost as if the storm had never happened. Almost.
Driving around the island yesterday, as I looked up into the tree tops, I would occasionally see patches of brown where there should have been green – a sure sign that a once healthy limb was now dead. Some of those limbs were small, but some were not. One of the limbs had already snapped and was hung up in the tree, waiting for the next strong gusts to drop it onto the unsuspecting ground. I also saw bushes along the beach that had turned brown, likely from the heavy dose of wind-driven salt spray. These things that we would not have necessarily seen as we cleaned up from the immediate aftermath of the storm, now revealing that we can’t move past the storm nearly as fast as we would have liked.
For most of us, even if we enjoy watching nature’s fury, we don’t especially enjoy going through storms. And if those storms become more than just something to watch and become personally injurious or inconveniencing, we just want to get through them as quickly as possible and put them far behind us. So after the storm, we go outside and clean things up and get back to business as usual, often unaware that storm damage isn’t always immediately apparent. Sometimes it takes a few days, weeks, or even months before the full damage becomes evident, and if we’ve already concluded that our lives were back to normal, the realization that we are still dealing with the storm can be surprising and disheartening.
Storms of all sorts often demand a rapid response, so we need to address those things that must be done. But therapists’ offices are filled with people who went through storms decades ago and never realized that they had unaddressed damage that continues to affect their behavior to this day. Some of that behavior has had devastating implications that is ultimately worse than the initial personal storm. Therefore, we need to stay conscious of the fact that we’ve been through a storm, and keep a watchful eye for signs of damage that we may have missed when the storm clouds had finally passed.
We need to praise God that storms pass, but don’t be too quick to put it all in the rear view mirror. Take time and be aware of those broken limbs that might come tumbling down at the most inopportune moment, so that future personal injury can be avoided.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron