Thursday, October 02, 2014

Girl vs. Storm

A scared little girl defeated a powerful thunderstorm today using the best weapon of all...prayer.

All day, the news talked about strong storms that were moving through the area with high winds and flooding predicted. I was keeping an eye on them using a weather application on my smart phone. The storms came all right. First to the east of us, then to the west but mostly avoiding the area where we live. But then I spotted a red blob on the radar map that was going to come right over top of us. I informed my kids that we were going to get hit by the storm at any minute. 

Thoughts of the last red blob to hit our area ran through my mind, and unbeknownst to me, the mind of my youngest daughter. The last time I believe a microburst hit our neighborhood causing localized damage to homes and landscaping. It felt like our house was shaking. We escaped with a tree in our back yard being uprooted, like many others. Some weren’t so lucky. At least one house had roof damage, and several had fencing torn down and even one had the block wall on one side of their property blown down. 

My daughter got very upset during that one but I was hoping that this time she would be less scared because it wasn’t as big. I was wrong.

This storm hit us fast and strong. It rained so much that we couldn’t see out the window. But this time it hit the front of our house instead of the back. Water was coming under the front door and in some of the upstairs windows. We put towels in place to prevent water damage.
She started crying and asking if we would be OK. I tried to assure her, but she is only 7 and gets scared to be upstairs by herself.

Not knowing what else tell her to calm her down, I suggested that she go say a prayer. She went and got the children’s Bible and sat in the chair, opened it up the page they had marked where the Our Father (the Lord’s Prayer for those of you in Rio Linda) was, put her hands together and read. Then she closed her eyes and tilted her head up slightly. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but whatever it was, was meaningful to her. 

When she was done, she was no longer frightened. The storm lasted an few more minutes and then stopped as suddenly as it started. To her, the prayer worked and stopped the storm and kept us safe.

I admit that I got a little misty eyed watching her because my scared little girl defeated a storm and protected her family with a prayer. 

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