We’ll Get Through This
We’ll get through this.
Those are the words I was about to type for the beginning of this post when the tornado siren blew. I grabbed my computer and phone and ran through the kitchen toward the basement apartment where our daughter and her family live.
She met me on the stairs. “Mom, tell the construction crew to come inside.”
10 minutes earlier they’d been in the footing trenches for our house addition, building forms so the pumper truck could pour concrete. Now they were running through driving rain to their truck.
I opened the front door and flagged them down. Soon my daughter, my son-in-law, my grandkids and I were sharing the basement with 4 strangers sheltering from the storm together.
None of us had masks. We stayed as far from one another as we could, and we watched as the storm intensified. The electricity flickered and went out. A doe and fawn ran across the back pasture desperate for cover.
The construction workers called to see how their families were. My husband called from work to see how we were. “We’re okay,” I said. “We’ll get through this.”
After a half hour, the storm let up and the construction guys left. “Let’s hope no one gets COVID,” I said once they were gone. “We had to choose between possible death for them and a slight risk of sickness for us,” my daughter replied. “We made the right choice.”
We went upstairs a few minutes later and found trees down, our yard light down, electrical lines down. Miraculously not one branch had landed on our house, our camper, or our cars. The damage was a new bead to add to the string of challenges weathered by our family over the years.
My mom’s family survived the Great Depression by shooting pigeons and raising vegetables. She was in high school during World War 2.
My parents weren’t even 30 when Dad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Mom furthered her education while teaching school, raising 3 kids, and caring for Dad.
My husband and I cared for our medically-fragile baby while living 70 miles from a hospital. That baby lived with PTSD for 26 years before it was diagnosed and treated.
Floods, blizzards, ice storms and more in our 43 years of marriage.
Now this unusually ferocious and widespread rain, wind, lightening, and thunderstorm. In the middle of a pandemic. While building an addition onto our house.
Our family, like yours, has an ever-growing string of challenges. I, perhaps unlike you, have doubted God’s goodness during the worst bits of them. But in every case, once the bead is knotted in place, I look back and recognize the same two life-giving truths.
God was present with us from beginning to end. And our faith is the stronger for it.
This morning, still without electricity, my husband headed outside to cut up branches and haul them away. On his way out the door, he smiled and said, “We’ll get through this.”
With all my heart, I want you to know that what my husband said is true. Whatever your hardship or challenge is today, be very sure that you will too.
Nevertheless, the righteous shall hold to his way,
And he who has clean hands shall grow stronger and stronger.
Job 17:9
