Crashing Down

I had an exciting weekend. A twenty foot tree landed on my house during a windstorm. At around 1:50 am, I heard a titanic boom and the house shook to its foundation. I jolted out of bed knowing instinctively even before I could wrap my head around it, that something cataclysmic had collided into my house. My lamp wouldn’t turn on. As I listened to the wind howling outside, I realized the power lines must also be compromised. I grabbed the flashlight from my side table and bolted across the house to my children’s bedrooms. They were both still peacefully sleeping. I took a moment to breathe and voiced a silent, thankful prayer. I think my boys could sleep through a hurricane, God love them. I shone my flashlight out the back porch and could see massive fir limbs staring at me from where my yard should have been and from above me the shadowed arms of branches. Yep…A tree from the neighbor’s yard had fallen on my house. Without the aid of light and the windstorm’s continuing howls, I could not determine the damage. I would have to wait till morning to know whether the injury to my house was minor or mortal.

Storms are a ready metaphor for the trauma we experience in our lives. Whether the death of a loved one or the experience of indescribable betrayal from those we trust, we will all experience that shock of waking up in the night to a loud disturbance that has shattered the safety and protection of the home we’ve created for ourselves. We will all feel vulnerable, afraid, and alone. Storms bring chaos with them. They fall on us quickly destroying whatever is in their path.

Since storms and our vulnerability in the face of them are a given, perhaps what’s more important is the actions we take in the aftermath of the storms. My novel, House on Sand, is the story of one woman’s journey to overcome infidelity and betrayal. One of my favorite scenes is when Ellie comes home to find that her husband, Davis has bought her the Williams Sonoma dishes she had been coveting for months. Soon after she discovers the pleasant surprise gift, she receives a nastier surprise. Davis confesses he has an apartment, he plans to leave her, and the affair between himself and her niece did not end as he had promised. Ellie’s world is shattered. When she’s finally alone and the children are in bed asleep, she takes the dishes to the deck and throws them into the yard like frisbees. She listens to each one shatter as she watches the gleam of broken glass in the porchlight.

The scene is important in the novel because Ellie discovers one of the many truths surrounding broken human relationships: our refusal to deal directly with what’s actually wrong. When trust is broken, we often fail to take full accountability for our own sins and instead try to fix what isn’t broken. Davis, most likely felt guilty about the affair and hurting his wife, but instead of actually ending his affair, changing his actions and working on the relationship with Ellie, Davis bought her designer plates. Ellie recognized the plates for what they were: an attempt to “buy her off” to say sorry without actually making amends. Davis perhaps hoped to assuage his guilt, but $500 plates would do nothing to ease the hurt of betrayal. Ellie saw in him a cheapness of spirit, a refusal to confront and deal with his own sin. Empty gestures in the face of betrayal do more harm than good and this is a principle we can take with us in all of our relationships.

Segueing back to my own literal storm…In the morning, when I awoke, I discovered a twenty foot tree in my yard. My fence was in splinters and the tree now filled half of my backyard. The top eight feet of the tree was on my roof and the shingles bent and misshapen. My head ached as I realized everything I would need to do to fix the damage. Now, I have to call my insurance agent, file a claim, find a contractor, figure out how to pay for the unexpected expense, and live with the reality that repairs might take months. After assessing the damage, I felt nearly paralyzed for a few moments as the burden of fixing what was broken lay heavy on me. I went to the kitchen and began to tidy up. I mopped the floor, cleaned the counter, and made myself a cup of coffee. As I sipped my coffee, I looked out my window and deliberately turned away from the wreckage and debris in the west of my yard and faced the east. For a moment I thought, I’m just going to pretend that the mess back there never happened. I’m going to enjoy my clean kitchen and stare out the window at the fence that isn’t broken. I don’t have to go into my bedroom and see the tree wedged against my window. I’ll close the shades and pretend it isn’t there. How tempting it was to ignore what was really broken to pretend that my life, my house was okay and that nothing was wrong. As any contractor will tell you, letting roof damage go is a recipe for disaster. Water will seep through quickly until a $1000 repair becomes a $10,000 roof replacement. This is the reality of sin and what happens when we ignore its dark power. It will spread and compromise our relationships, our very being.

This is not the way I would have chosen to start the new year, but the experience did remind me of areas in my own life that need fixing. This year, I will not look away or live in denial, but face the wreckage head on. It’s where we all have to start.