I woke from a dream this morning that has left me both shaken and reassured.
A storm had blown into town. It was one of those once-in-a-century things (much like the storm that hit Phoenix a year ago in August). The sky was dark. I mean dark. It hadn't started raining yet, but the wind was whipping about, and that was pretty bad in and of itself. Ben and I were sitting in the living room when all of a sudden we heard a tremendous thud on the roof.
I went outside. The wind had died down and it was eerily quiet. The darkness was now punctuated by a ray of sunlight coming from a break in the clouds, hitting squarely on our yard, allowing me to clearly see survey what had happened. The first thing I noticed were the rivers of what at first thought was water pouring off the eaves of the house. It looked like rain, but on closer examination it was actually dirt. That's weird, I thought. I then stepped off the porch and looked around. The tree out front was stripped of its leaves and branches; there was debris everywhere. Then I looked up.
There were a lot of shingles missing from the roof. "Nothing that can't be repaired," I thought. But then as turned my head the source of the tremendous thud was apparent: there was now a huge, 15-foot side hole in middle of the roof, and the edge of a pallet full of rolled sod was now sitting where that part of the roof used to be.
It could only have been a tornado, I thought.
"Ben!" I yelled, "Come here!"
Ben came out and looked and the damage. I swear I'd never seen him so frightened in my life; the color completely drained from his face. At the same time my thought was, "Nothing inside was damaged. We and the dogs are all safe. The hole can be covered with a tarp until it can be repaired. And most importantly, our landlords (who live right next door but whose home seemed undamaged) have insurance on this place.
"We need to go next door," I said. Ben motioned for me to stay put, and as he started walking over there, he fell to the ground on all fours and started wretching.
I came away from this dream with several insights. Yes, a storm is coming. There will be damage, but Ben and I will survive. And most importantly, there are people out there who will have our backs.