Preparing for the storm
If you’ve ever lived in the south, you are familiar with hurricane preparation. The act in itself is very interesting when you think about it. You spend lots of time tracking a storm that may come your way. You follow the path on NOAA. You ensure that you have enough water, batteries, flashlights, non-perishable food items. You secure loose outdoor articles for fear that they may be displaced or worse cause damage to your home. You may even choose or be ordered to evacuate, depending on your proximity to the storm. And then, when you’ve prepared as much as you can, you wait and pray.. you pray that after all of your effort, nothing happens.
I’d argue that life is a lot like this. Sometimes you’re able to see the storms brewing. You may not not how hard it will hit you or if it will even hit you at all, but if you have time to react and you decide to stay put, you ensure that you have the best chance of weathering the storm by gathering all of the items on your checklist. And some of these items you already have! You probably don’t need to purchase a flashlight or a generator for every storm! Because you have some stuff left from the last time you prepared for a storm. You don’t start with an empty hurricane kit every storm. And in life, you don’t start with an empty tool kit each time you have a challenge. You draw on the experiences that you’ve had and the strength and perseverance that you’ve developed along the way.
As we were preparing for Laura, I thought back to Harvey and said to myself .. that was a whole mess, but we got through it. We’ll be ok. And we were this time. Laura spared us. So now we’re resetting the patio equipment so we can go back to enjoying life and restocking our hurricane shelf in the garage so we have those things ready for the next storm. Because there will be another storm, we just don’t know when..
“You’re either in a storm or preparing for one. ”
