Thunderstorms clear the air

I have to admit that I am terrified of lightning. It stems from when I was a very young girl and my mother had just had my younger brother Chris without me even knowing she was pregnant. I was vulnerable, insecure and so wanted to be noticed by everyone. I had been the baby of the family for five whole years and therefore had all the attention that a child could ever wish for until my ideal world was shattered when my mother arrived home from the hospital with a baby! I was devastated. That was in 1968.

At the same time I had some older neighbours that I worshipped and they were filling my head with all sorts of phobias. One that has stuck with me was that lightning was deadly and could kill. That’s all I needed to hear as an insecure five year old who desperately wanted attention. Every time lightning flashed I got the desired attention I needed from my mother so that fear grew with each year that passed.

This morning I woke up at 6.15 and looked out the window to see what the weather was looking like as we are under Tropical Storm Watch as Hurricane Katia is some 260 nautical miles away from us. As I looked out the window, I was mesmerized by the colours in the sky and the very different feelings from the sky. To my left, the sky was dawn blue, in the centre it was slightly cloudy with beautiful yet threatening red light, to my right were menacing cumulus black clouds all against a backdrop of a mysterious red light interspersed with a glowing white and yellow light. As I was studying the spectacular colours of the sky, a bolt of fierce fork lightning streaked across it from the left to the right followed immediately by a smaller less threatening sliver of fork lightning from right to left almost as if they were doing a dance together.

The sight took my breath away. But what was even more liberating was the fact that I was not afraid for the first time in forty three years. I actually felt lighter and more in tune with nature because I saw its dance followed by its loud rumble of thunder and knew that it is just as necessary as the beautiful days. Thunderstorms are as my mother used to say, “Necessary to clear the air”. And she is so right because after that fierce mini storm, the closeness of the air retreated and instead was replaced by a lovely and fresh breeze and the sun is trying its hardest to push through.

Though there is a ferocious hurricane barrelling across the Atlantic Ocean right now, my little Island home, Bermuda, is getting the benefits of her clearing our air and hopefully we will enjoy the sunshine that ensues thereafter. Just like life, we experience our own inner  thunderstorms when we go through transitions but once they pass,  our lives, just like the air after a thunderstorm, clears and we once again can see the light  of a new day dawning.