Day 279: After the Storm Clears
After weeks of being on hurricane alert and lots of storms bringing a ton of rain, the quiet has returned. No rain for a while.
When something upends your routine and has you in a constant state of preparedness, like a hurricane, when the clouds part and all is calm, everything in your world feels different.
I can feel the peace in my body.
At the penthouse, every August would bring the time when all the furniture on the rooftop patio had to be piled up and covered with tarps under the palapa. And then at the end of October everything would be put back in its normal position and life would go back to normal.
At the motorhome, I prepared for the unknown as best I could. Getting the cement put in the ground for the hooks to be attached to the motorhome in case of a hurricane.
Luckily no hurricane or tropical storm hit. Some tropical storms can do more damage than hurricanes because of the torrential downpours. Those are never a good thing in the desert where the ground doesn't absorb the water.
There's a lot of logistical planning that goes on in my head trying to run scenarios and figure out what the play would be.
Roads here only washed out a little because we didn't get hit hard. But when we do, that means several days without being able to get into town for food or water. When the power goes out from storms, places will reopen when they can, but everything is cash only.
Storms require preparation.
The good thing about storms is you do have time to prepare. And afterward, there is evidence left to show you what else you need to be prepared for the next time. You see where the leaks are that need to be fixed. It also shows you erosion paths. You can plan around those in various ways to protect yourself from more erosion in the future.
It's the same with the storms we face in our lives.
Some of them give us time to prepare because we can see the possibility coming. Some show up and we still have a runway to get ready for what's ahead or to start doing things now to make sure it doesn't get worse.
And when whatever cracked us open has passed and we're sitting in the aftermath, we can look at what was left in its wake.
We start to see the patterns. We see where the leaks were and where the erosion got in and the path they took.
We look at how much of it was external things we now choose to walk away from and rebuild something brand new somewhere that suits us better, given who we became having just walked through that. And also what we want to keep and just shift a little.
We look at what parts were internal and taught us more about ourselves. How we had been choosing. What we had refused to see and what all of that cost us. Now we have more knowledge and we can choose differently.
And when we look up, the skies are clearing and we are starting to feel more calmness return. We have space to hear ourselves think again.
And it's time to decide what we want things to feel like now. What does our soul desire and how can we make it reality?
Given the pieces that are still there, how do we choose to arrange them? What new pieces do we want to add?
What is the vision we choose to create of our life moving forward?
Because something cracked us open, by that cracking open, we have permission to restructure, recalibrate, reclaim, rebuild our lives in any way we choose.
That can mean a fresh start in one part of our life, or in many parts at once.
The slate may not be completely blank, but it is more open than it was before. And we can draw something new with what remains, what we've learned, and what we now know we want.
When we're in the in-between, the answers to all those questions may be, "I don't have a clue. I'm just numb."
And then the numbness leads to feeling coming back and once we start to feel again, we can choose better feeling thoughts. And those better feeling thoughts lift our vibration and better things begin to come to us that match that vibration.
And now we can think a little clearer and make choices without having to ask other people what they think. Because we're starting to trust ourselves again.
The next thing you know, we start to have desires. Our soul is speaking to us and nudging us in one direction or another asking us to try something new, or give something we set aside another chance.
That is how we know life is returning. Something in us begins to reach forward again.
As the sun begins to shine again when the last remnants of the storm have disappeared from view, we are left with unlimited possibilities of what we choose to make of our next season.
We can look at what held, what leaked, what eroded, and what we no longer want to keep repairing.
And then we can choose what this next season is asking to become.
The storm may have changed the landscape.
But the clearing gives us room to see differently.
And that's where the new life begins.
Today's Gentle Practice
Think about a storm you've recently come through, or one you are still finding your way out of.
Ask yourself:
What did this storm reveal that I can no longer ignore?
Notice what may need to be repaired, released, or rebuilt differently.
You don't have to redesign your whole life today.
Just let the clearing show you one honest next piece.
With you,
Lynn
Join me on Substack and read Letters from The Threshold
