Storm Warning
My body jolted awake and involuntarily popped off the bed without my brain knowing what was going on. The loud siren wailed out of our phones, and droned outside. Lighting struck.
Bleary-eyed, I checked my phone. "WARNING: At 3:03 am, radar indicated a tornado in your area. Take shelter immediately..." I didn't bother reading the rest. Within seconds I was in the kids' rooms, waking them up, and herding them down to the basement.
We were scared. Glued to the radar and the Tornado app on my phone, we all huddled in our basement, listening to the rain, praying, and hoping our lives weren't about to get turned upside down.
Most of the alarm bells in my life aren't so loud.
If I stop for a moment and listen to my body, it tells me when all is not well. My stomach is tight, or worse, it just hurts. My jaws are tired and tense from clenching. My neck and shoulders ache. Those are often my physical alarms that I am learning to hear as warnings that a high pressure system of anxiety is building in me. If I don't start to get curious about it, I'll be cleaning up storm damage before I know it.
There are the relational alarms too. Historically I've been too fast-paced and future-oriented to notice a silent distance projecting from my wife when she isn't doing well – a cold down-draft blowing through. And I might have more quickly chalked up a kid's orneriness as disrespect, rather than seeing it as a cry for attention. If I don't offer some kindness, a tornado is heading our way.
A year or two ago I set up automated text messages from my bank when our checking account gets below a certain level. If I don't pay attention, we're likely to end up over-spending and getting sucked into a vortex with our finances. (One could argue this hasn't helped my general anxiety though... ha!)
When the alarms shocked us awake, we took quick and decisive action. By 3:20 the tornado warning had passed. There was no actual tornado, which we were thankful for as we tried to let the adrenaline wear off and fall back to sleep.
I am learning to head warnings and watch the skies. Not to live in worry of calamity, but to live intentionally and restoratively. I want to be a man who takes decisive action on behalf of myself and others, rather than a man who live reactively and passively and allows the world in and around him to swirl into chaos.
What are some of the alarms you need to start paying more attention to today? How can you offer decisive curiosity and kindness to yourself and others in those areas before a tornado hits, or as you are cleaning up in its path of destruction?
