About an hour ago, I went out on my balcony hoping to see the full moon coming up over the rooftops of my neighborhood. Unfortunately, I’d long missed the moonrise, but could see the brightness of it in the clouds. In the distance, I saw a sheet of rain coming down over the city and was excited to watch the storm develop and move its way across the valley. I stayed on my balcony for about an hour, watching an amazing lightshow with big lightning bolts along with some zingers and then the super high lightning that we used to call “heat lightning” back in the Midwest.
When I was a little girl I was terrified of storms – especially the ones that came with tornado warnings that sent the family down to our creepy, dank basement with a radio tuned to the AM station close to home. The thunder would follow the lightning (just like it always does) and I was reminded of my Dad trying to calm my fears by telling me to count “one-one thousand, two-one thousand, etc. then divide by 5” (brilliant move by Daddy-O, having me focus on counting and math rather than my fear that lightning was gonna strike us dead). My Dad was an amazing man who knew a lot of tricks; I was always fascinated by this one to determine how close the storm was to our house.
I came to love a good thunderstorm after I moved to the desert Southwest. Because in that part of the country, you don’t get summer storms. You get monsoons – and that’s if you’re lucky. And on those super-hot nights when the sky would light up and deliver no rain, I began to appreciate how awesome “real” thunderstorms really are. While storms can be powerfully scary, they also provide a magical renewal when you wake up the next day to a fresh scent in the air and wet grass underneath your feet. Tonight’s storm in the desert was a typical monsoon – lots of wind, thunder, and lightning but not much in precipitation. But that same magical renewal will come tomorrow when I wake up and take the dog outside. The fresh scent of desert sage that’s been kissed by some raindrops is one of the best things to take in on the morning following a monsoon.
Mother nature provides us with many magical moments but the magic of the thunder storm is a sight to behold. And if you’ve never taken the opportunity to watch one move in your general direction, I highly recommend it (as long as you’re safe about it). I promise it’s 800 times more magical than ANYTHING you’re gonna find on TV or your social media feed.
RenewYou.
Be Well.