HURRICANE AFTERMATH

9/1/10 HURRICANE EARL. A hurricane warning has been issued for the U.S. East Coast from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to the Virginia state line. That was the weather headline when I opened CNN this morning.
It brought back beach camping memories from the summer of 1974. Following a ferry ride over from Ocracoke Island, where a seagull “pooped” on my head---I should have known that was not a very auspicious beginning----checking out the wild ponies on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and frolicking on Kill Devil Hill, where the Wright brothers made their first flight, our troubles began.
Our transmission had “dropped” and we were “camped” in Rodanthe, NC at Cape Hatteras National Seashore when a similar warning came (the camp store manager came by shouting out the news, not exactly National Weather Service sirens). Every car left but ours---we had no working car.

We had to batten down the hatches and ride it out. That meant Larry pulling a concrete picnic table over to anchor our tent lines/stakes and fishing for our supper. My job was to fix food and tell stories to keep son Buddy, age 4, and Larry’s siblings, age 14 and 9, calm. No cell phones back then to call for help. I don’t remember that the “storm” had a name. Did they name hurricanes in the 70s? I do know we endured hurricane force winds even though the full landfall force was further up the coast. For sure those winds were something resembling a hurricane---especially in its aftermath and our emotional turmoil. With hurricanes, there’s always an aftermath.

Spiritual maturity would not have described us at that point in time but I guarantee I was praying. Hurricane prayers are very similar to fox hole prayers, I imagine.
Spiritually, what “we sow in the wind, we reap in the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7) A “harvesting what you plant analogy” with a somewhat negative connotation. I’m hoping that nowadays I am sowing more than fox hole or hurricane-type prayers.

By Friday, Hurricane Earl will be taking aim at the Outer Banks with strong winds, pounding waves and potential flooding problems. Result: lots of aftermath.

An insider joke with some dear friends has us calling our spouses Earl and Earline. We’ve been through a lot together in our years of marriage and know first hand what a whirlwind can do to a relationship. Especially one without prayer. Long ago we learned to sow in acceptance, forgiveness, humor, and love in order to avoid reaping a path of confusion, destruction, disorder and turbulence----the aftermath of wind/hurricane-type behavior.