Passing Storms

Storms come through your life in many different ways. Sometimes it's the end of a relationship, sometimes the death of a loved one or the loss of a job. A storm can be anything that catches you unaware and changes your life in some way, either temporarily or permanently.

Storms force you to make changes you wouldn't have thought to make on your own. They force you to take a look at your life in a different way. Initially we resist the change, we fight it, we grieve for what was lost. Even if it was just our expectations of the future.

Eventually though you let go of all the anger and the grief and find that the storm that blew through your life was really in someway a blessing in disguise. Sometimes it gives you freedom you never realized you had. Freedom to make changes to your life you may not have made if everything had remained exactly the way it had always been.

Hurricane Florence blew through North Carolina and caused so much destruction to so many people. Many people that I know in the Wilmington area lost their homes, they lost everything.

Where I work I saw so many people evacuating out of the area and 6 days after the storm I saw them trying to make their way back. I watched them come in one after the other, so tired, so worn out. You could instantly tell by looking at them who was traveling back. They came in looking for coffee to give them the energy to finish their trip, food, some place to sit that wasn't moving if only for a little while after being stuck in traffic for hours as everyone tried to return at the same time. Most of them didn't even know what they were returning to.

Some people in the state lost everything for the second time in as many years and have chosen to not rebuild but to move on and find something new. I can't say as I blame them. I don't think I would want to rebuild it all again either.

As I work on cleaning up from this passing storm and some of the others that have passed through my life recently, I think about more changes I can make that will help me to be more aligned with myself and help me find out what I want to do with myself in the coming months.

We have all had storms of various kinds come through our lives and elicit change.

What storms have passed through your life? What changes were you forced to make that you may not have made otherwise? Looking back do you think the changes ended up being for the better?