THUNDER ANGEL'S STORY

y journey to faith in Christ is quite revelatory in nature. As a child I had an intense fascination with thunderstorms. It never occurred to me until after I embraced Jesus that the love I had for thunderstorms, as a child was actually a deeply spiritual craving manifesting itself at the coming of those storms.

But, before I go any further into my love affair with storms, I must explain a little about how stormy my own history has been.

I didn't have a great relationship with my Dad. As a child he and I were close at times, but after he had a massive heart attack his temperament was never the same. He was already very angry and bitter over his own past, having lost his Mother and his younger brother in a train collision, and having lost two former wives to death... he had much to be angry for.

But, he carried that anger into his final marriage with my Mother, who herself carried a lot of rage over many things in her own past. I was born into a pretty dysfunctional family.

Growing up in that environment... where anger seethed silently beneath the surface, and occasionally broke through when circumstances grated the will of the family thin... in that environment I became an emotional orphan.

But, as time went on, I began feeling things inside of me that I was not able to fully comprehend. I now know that the tension and the loneliness I endured as a child instigated bizarre emotions before their time. I became sexually active long before the onset of puberty. And, after doing a lot of study in this field, I have learned that children with silent and repressed emotions tend to form maladies of heart and soul that can lead to strange emotional expressions. I simply tasted the fruit of emotional abandonment. The intense, but denied desire to feel truly loved and accepted formed within me a blazing cauldron of deep, very deep yearning.

After my parents found out that I was experiencing strong sexual feelings, they had no idea what to do. So, being traditionally conservative Christians, they sought to repress those feelings too, which only drove me further into secretive isolation. I got real good at hiding those emotions from them.

But, there was one joy in my life then that I have not forgotten. When the dark clouds began to gather over the Western NC mountains, I knew that a friend was coming to take me away.... even if it was just for a moment. It was coming to take me from the miserable life that I was living. When the wind began to blow, and the rain fell, I knew, deep inside an inexplicable place... that I was home.

Dad and Mom could not understand why I had such a powerful affection for the storm. It brought everything to a standstill. It forced the world beneath it to slow down and ponder its fragile state. It took by force the respect from everyone under its mighty maelstrom, and made them stop to consider something both awesome and dangerous. It damaged cars and houses with wind and hail. It flooded the streets with impassable rivers, and cracked the gloom with strobing white-hot fingers that stretched across the lowered black skies, and the thundering chorus boomed and echoed away into unknown horizons. I lost myself to it every single time.

When a storm moved upon the mountains, my parents knew that they better keep an eye on me, because I would run wholly abandoned into it's powerful embrace. I didn't care what it did to me. It could blast me apart with a lightning bolt. It could deafen me with its thunder, or sweep me away to die on its winds. I just didn't care. The love and elation I had for the storm was far stronger than the instinct to survive. It was much deeper than instinct in reality, though it took instinct along for the ride. It was at its core... a Spiritual Reality. I was so deeply in love with this power, and I simply could not tolerate life without this wild lover whose freedom and expression cares nothing for the convenience of a dull, fallen existence.

I could not explain to anybody why I felt such a passionate love for the storm. I didn't really know the answer myself. All I knew was that I became someone else when it came... or rather, that I became who I (truly was) deep inside. I did not become someone else when the storm came. I was never more real than when it took me away and raptured me from a painful and bitter life. For me, the storm was God. On some strangely intimate and personal level that no mere words can imprison with description, I knew that I belonged to the storm. I just knew it. The ecstasy was just too real and yet at the same time just too un-believable to just dismiss it as a child's reckless fantasy.

I now realize that the stirring passions I had, as a child was actually a gift from God that led me to know Him. The emotional abandonment that brought intimate passions to life within me was a gift. If I had a stable family environment, I would not have been deepened, as I was to hold greater depths of personal and spiritual significance.

After I embraced Christ nearly eight years ago, He began leading me on a journey to re-connect with the strong heart of desire and intimacy that I once had as a child. It led me into deep dark places where I was exposed to the bitter truths of what my wounds had made me. I was a ghost, ignorant of it's own demise. Murdered by the hand of emotional abandonment. He had to resurrect me from the cold and poisonous waters at the bottom of my inner world, where every shadow melded into the form of a broken Daddy, and his dead son.

I have seen so much in my relationship with Christ. It has humbled me in ways that I can never explain. But, I am so grateful that He led me on this journey. I have known Healing that goes beyond the mending of a shattered heart. I now know the God who was in the storm of my childhood. The unbearable lust I had for the wind and rain, the thunder and lightning... was the craving that He put in me to be with Him. He made me a passionate lover of His wild embrace. And, He is re-connecting me with the hunger that I once knew.

Jesus is Extraordinary. So is the life He gives and inspires.