They Follow Me

When I was young, I had a facination with storms. I wanted to be outside when it rained. I loved hearing thunder and then counting to hear the lightening. I would watch for funnel clouds to form and drop. I would sit for hours watching the blizzard from the family picture window.

When I was 12 things started to change. My love affair with storms would change. I was camping with my family when a lighteing storm blew in. It hit a transformer pole causing a fire. We didn't have to leave but walking through the damage and that smell is something I haven't forgot.

Sometime after that, a car I was riding in hydroplaned while driving through a flooded road. I felt the car begin to float and the panic of everyone in the car. I became aware of how dangerous storms can be.

There was the storm where lightening hit the tree, I had just been leaning on.  The hail storm that really damaged the vehicle I was in.  etc.

Freak things happened here and there. I still didn't fear storms even after many events. However, I started to believe they were "following me". It seemed for two years if there was a storm anywhere close, it was where I was. Didn't matter if I was at school, at home, work or traveling. I thought this so much I made myself believe it. My parents played it off as one of "those teenage things" but for me, it was something I truly believed.

I was 16, it was Spring. I was staying in a hotel after running away. I was there with my boyfriend. A tornado took the roof and the floor above us off. I literally laid in bed and looked outside. The police officer that came to get us from our room, told me something I never have forgot, when I tried to convince him the tornado came for me. He told me, "the storm does not come for me, it's getting my attention". I didn't know what he meant at the time. I went home that night. The police officer advised my parent to get me in counseling, this was not something that was just going to pass.

I went through counseling. I learned not to fear storms but to truly enjoy them, as I did when I was young. The counselor gave me a camera and told me to go watch storms, take pictures and write my feelings at the time. Slowly, I embrassed storms again.

I now enjoy taking pictures of them. There is nothing more beautiful then a storm building. I like to be out in them. As the officer said, the storm is getting my attention. On a personal level, the storms have come to mean God is trying to get my attention.

Something very ironic is happening in my life. This area of North Dakota has not received much rain in three years. The first week I was here, they said they had more rain then they had in the last three years. Since I have come to my friends home after asking for help, it's rained and stormed a couple times a week. I'm praying that God gives me the wisdom to know what he is trying to get my attention about. I'm looking for answers to my prayers. I hope when I have learned my lesson here, these people will continue to get rain for their crops.

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For all of you that ask why I take so many storm pictures, now you know.