Thunder Storms

A slight chill softened by the humidity in the air is all it takes. A step outside, the wet, woody smell hits your nostrils and you look up to the sky. Dark clouds roll in. Some blooming out of nowhere while others just mosy their way across the sky as if they’d been waiting their turn this whole entire time. 

There’s much to be said about a thunderstorm. It grants life by watering the grass and the flowers and the still green tomatoes that hang off the vine. It’s a reminder that this planet is still very much alive though we float in the vast, unknown space. 

It’s like emotions. After gathering up for so long that you have no choice but to burst out in a violent outrage as tears, raindrops start flowing from your eyes, clouds. 

It’s like a stomach ache. Each time the thunder rolls, it feels as if the stomach does also. Like the sky turned in on itself and the pain was too much to bear. A shit storm if you will. 

When I was more religious, I thought of it as if something or someone had upset God in some divine way. I often wondered what made him so upset that he needed to cry in such a dramatic fashion? To soak the earth with his somehow fresh water tears. 

Now I just think of it as a calming act of nature. After the earth or the area had been sweltered by heat or burned by wildfires, the earth offers us this one last reprieve. As it showers down on us, it lets the skin breathe, the sidewalks cool, and the vegetation drinks up the sweet rain fall. 

But where’s the calm in listening to loud crashes and seeing fractures of lightning across the sky? My question is how could it not be calming? The loud rush of the rain against the pavement is enough to lull me to sleep. Seeing a crack of lightning is fascinating and exhilarating if it's far enough away from you. 
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The best part about it is knowing that it will pass and you feel better that it will, but somehow you know that you needed this. In your heart. In your soul. In the celebration all around you as a rainbow finally appears after days and days of being in the dark. 

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