Thunder is rolling like timpani over the pond as sabbath sleepiness wraps me up in my favorite overstuffed chair. I murmur thanks for a roof over my head as the curtain of whispery rain comes down. With age, I am less fearful of storms. I have teetered on the fence between faith and fear for so long. Is this true for other believers, I wonder? Do we run for shelter fearing pain or death, or can we go there in peace, confident of God's provision for us?
The word "shelter" came to me during quiet prayer and meditation last year. I knew it meant more than our plan for building a new home. It was more than a structure. We wanted our home to be a refuge to others. We wanted to offer not only hospitality, but also provide a safe place for guests to lay down their heavy backpack of burdens, and find peace, comfort and prayers.
"Shelter" has steadily threaded its way through my life. As I move into these old, wise years, I see how several milestones were linked to seeking safe refuge. Most of you can only read about the first one in your history books.
John F. Kennedy was our president in the fall of 1962, when the trains rumbled down past my elementary school on their way to Homestead Air Force base. My fourth grade teacher tried her best to explain geo-political crisis to curious children who suddenly preferred gawking to games at recess. Our fingers curled in the chain link fence, we watched and listened to the rackety-ring of troop cars and freight platforms swaying heavy with large rockets and tanks. We overheard enough adult talk to know that Miami was ninety miles from Russian missiles pointed at us from the shores of Cuba.
During those tense hours and days when the Soviet Union and the United States balanced on the brink of mutually assured nuclear destruction, we watched atomic age short films with two starkly different images: test footage of an exploding nuclear bomb, brighter than the sun, searing the sky and horizon, exhaling its enormous white-hot mushroom cloud, then a holocaust wind obliterating the landscape. That horror show segued to a cutesy cartoon of Bert the Civil Defense turtle, crowned by a vintage World War I helmet, taking shelter in his shell from a firecracker. Perky Bert reminded us to "duck and cover" under our school desks or in the bedroom closet, if air raid sirens whined.
Even then, "duck and cover" made little sense to me. Why would we attempt to tuck tight as a turtle, sweaty hands clasped over our necks if we were going to evaporate in a blinding roar? And air raid shelters! Who in Miami could dig more than three inches in their yard without hitting solid coral rock?
Still, we lived through civil defense sirens and public drills. Shelter construction around the rest of the country soared with a zeal no generation has since matched. Even four years after the missile crisis, our Cold War era science class reviewed a manual for fallout shelter living, including a guide to first aid for radiation sickness. I was haunted by a certain sense of hopelessness in possibly surviving nuclear war, but dying slowly, entombed in a concrete hole in the ground. My simple childish prayer of "If I should die, before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take," took on new meaning.
I learned a lot about underground safe space when two decades later, married to my Roy, his military career landed us in Missouri: Tornado Alley. Sirens again. This time, however, I was scared for more than my own skin.
Our Kris was due in a few weeks. Purple-black clouds and an odd teal horizon warned us as we raced down the highway from our tour of the local hospital maternity wing. We stayed just ahead of the storm, heading home to Whiteman Air Force base where our toddler Seana was awaiting us at the child care center. We had to stop long enough to grab Seana and Roy's jalopy we had left there after work.
I beat Roy home, and as I swung my legs out of the driver's seat, my heart zoomed to double-time. The tornado siren was wailing. I saw no funnel clouds, but didn't stop to stare. With Roy pulling in right behind me, bringing Seana in his arms, I fumbled with the front door key. Clutching the bannister with both hands, I plunged my pregnant girth down two and three basement steps at a time, miraculously without tumbling. Tucked into a corner, Roy held our toddler, I clung to him, and wrapped the other arm over my baby stirring inside. We stared at the weird pea-green light coming in the small windows at ground level. Soaked in sweat, we waited. Listened. . . . Thunder, rain, but no roaring. No cyclone. It would not be the last warning while we lived in the nation's mid-section. But years later, we returned to South Florida, where another wind would change our lives forever.
My children and I got up early, squeezing out and drinking up the last juice of late summer, 1992. We'd bought new shoes, Trapper Keeper notebooks, little Jim had pressed uniforms, and I had a fresh Teacher Plan Book. Serenaded by a nonstop cicada chorus, which aptly sang "heat-heat-heat-heat," we strolled along the banks of a large pond, watching swans and ducks in their sunny morning dip, not far from our house at Homestead Air Force Base.
Heading for the shadier side of the pond, we hushed one another as we spotted a large brown duck, crouching in the tall reeds along the water. Despite our stealthy approach, we startled her. Up she popped, flipping upward her wings. Surprise! A family of fuzzy-headed babies tumbled from underneath her, and plip-plip-plip, into the shallows they slipped. All the tiny frazzled heads bobbed up and mama duck glided in to guide them.
Neither the children nor I had ever seen this outside of cartoons or storybooks. The rising South Florida sun was not the only illumination at that instant. A distant memory whispered an ancient psalm:
I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.
The spiritual world suddenly made sense in the physical realm, reflected in the water and weeds around us. And in that last sip of summer, our physical world was about to shatter.
In a handful of days after that tranquil lesson at the pond, a tropical storm nicknamed "Raggedy Andy" grew into a Category 5 Hurricane Andrew and came for us. The monster storm blasted its way into the record books, devastating Homestead's base and community. Along with my parents, we survived, huddled in a hallway of my childhood home in South Miami, spared of the near 200 mile-per-hour winds that mangled our base house. Another "first" for our children and many just like us: we were homeless refugees.
Afterward, while the military gears turned for weeks to resettle an entire community of Air Force personnel and their families, my sister and her husband rearranged their quiet lives 250 miles from the destruction, providing nine weeks of refuge to our shell-shocked family, including our stowaway parakeet and two hamsters. They patiently took us in under their wing until we were strong enough to venture out again into the stream. Frazzle-headed and shaky, in newfound awe of God's mighty power and mercy, we made our way toward building a new nest.
It's taken a Cold War and storm warnings to teach me to trust my Lord. The reassurance of the God's refuge is not about "ducking and covering" or racing for the basement. When I once wrapped my arm around my unborn baby girl, I was trying to keep her safe in my womb. I feared we might die together in a Missouri tornado. Yet, I now realize, she and I, knitted together, would have gone to Heaven as one, forever resting in the shadow of the Father's wing. If the explosions come, or the whirlwind takes me up, I know where I will be. Believing in His love and care for us promises a refuge of lasting construction.
As the thunder rolls, I am comfortable and able to rest. I have a Savior. I know better the shelter I seek.
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
Psalm 91:1(NIV)