6th day -- Rock it!

Having once weathered a storm, a person gains confidence to face future storms and comes away equipped to recognize when a storm is approaching and so to begin fortifying themselves sooner and with more accuracy. A person learns where the resources are. So it was with the storm we just endured.

This day saw not the end of a storm but, hopefully, the reining in of a storm so that it will not be able to build itself up to such a tempest again. There will be changes to make because the storm has wrecked some plans, but there is always a plan B. Often when one structure is demolished, a person can salvage the ruins and construct something that turns out to be pretty durable, useful, or even fascinating. It's up to each person to meet the challenge of sifting through the debris and evaluating each item to establish what it can contribute to future good. I am grateful for earlier storms which prepared me for this storm and grateful that this storm exposed new resources and left the ground more fertile so that we can watch and wait for things to sprout up in surprising places where there seemed to be nothing growing before.

The picture for today is of the chain guard on a happy little boy's first bicycle, a Huffy "Rock it," complete with training wheels and nubby black tires which have already left a few sets of rubber skid marks on his grammy's kitchen floor. But that's all good! Grammy is just content to have grandkids in the kitchen, skid marks notwithstanding. It is the kids and grandkids that give grandmas the will to weather the storms, and it is the resources of praying family and friends that God puts into our lives that make us able to endure whatever the storms bring. This little boy and his red Huffy "Rock it" will always remind this grandma that God Rocks!