This week I got to meet my newest niece (seventh niece and I also have three nephews) and hang out with all her siblings! I’ve always enjoyed spending time with family and am usually onboard for road trips. So the prospect of an adventure, with a cute bundle of joy at the end, was something that I couldn’t pass up.
It also was Pentecost Sunday. I can thank my Lutheran upbringing for my understanding of Pentecost (here’s a link if you aren’t sure of the history of Pentecost). This was an especially sweet Pentecost as my niece was baptized (Lutheran Baptismal Doctrine). And yet, while I deeply cherish all that happened this weekend, that is not the “pouring” that I am talking about in the title of this blog.
It was getting later Sunday night. I was driving the last leg of that day’s driving with my travel buddies (we’d left mid-afternoon after all the celebrations to head home). I’d noticed some storm warnings along our path earlier in the day, but hadn’t given them much thought as the skies were beautiful and clear most of the afternoon and evening. Plus, the storm was ahead of us and moving the same direction as we were.
Around dinner time, we noticed some darkening clouds ahead. I was still hopeful that we wouldn’t catch up with the storm, but when we started seeing the lightening fork across the sky, my hope started to waver. My navigator (aka my mom) started looking at the weather where we were located and tracking the storm. She realized that there was a tornado watch ahead along with a severe thunderstorm warning (including hail, strong winds, and possible flooding). We were in Kansas need I say more?
When I had taken over driving earlier in the evening, I was listening to a prayer session from my M12M Group. The focus of the prayer was Pentecost and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Talk about a perfect way to drive through this storm. The lightening never stopped the whole hour. Thankfully, the wind never picked up. The rain was a different matter. It rained so hard at points that I had to drive with my hazard lights on and going about half the speed limit in order to see the road clearly.
We debated hunkering down and letting the storm continue ahead of us, but where could we wait? Should we wait? We knew that we needed to stay on the main roads, so we decided to stay the course and keep driving as we were only about an hour away from our hotel and shelter from the storm.
If that wasn’t hard enough, you have to add in the flying moths that were in our car. In the middle of driving through this storm, my other travel buddy discovered three moths flying around in our car. We still don’t know when they got in the car or where they were for the prior 5 hours of the trip! Did I mention that my travel buddy in the middle seat is deathly afraid of moths?!? She was trapped in a car, in the dark, in the middle of a severe thunderstorm…with three dive bombing moths. Let’s just say that there was a lot of prayer that happened in the car at that very moment. I turned up the worship music that was playing and we continued our slow trek to the hotel.
Obviously, we made it safely as you’re reading this blog. One thing that I didn’t mention, is that I saw a partial rainbow at the beginning of the storm. Rainbows have always been special for me. I always feel like the Lord is reminding me that He has me and everything is ultimately going to be okay. Some might say that the rainbow was just a naturally occurring phenomenon, but I choose to believe that He put it there for me to see. He wanted me to remember that my hope is in Him and not in the vehicle I was driving, or our GPS/weather app, or in the power windows that we used to finally get the moths out of the car. It was in Him. His Spirit was present in the car with us and gave all of us peace as we drove. He was our safety.
You probably had a much calmer Sunday, but I hope you were able to see your own rainbows and be reminded of the presence of the Holy Spirit and His safety and peace. May your hope continue to grow in Him rather then in the things of this earth!
Adventures of a Single Pretzel 