Lessons from the Storm

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and with Florida's preparation for a major hit from Hurricane Milton, I’m flooded with memories.

Disaster struck on October 10, 2018.

We had a 48-hour window after Hurricane Michael entered the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 1 storm until it slammed into us as a Category 5, with winds exceeding 155 mph. There was nothing we could do to stop it. We simply braced for impact.

In all my years, I had never seen anything like Hurricane Michael’s path of destruction. A wide swath of Florida’s Panhandle experienced devastation that looked as though an enormous bomb had gone off.

As I've scrolled through social media pictures in the past week, waves of grief wash over me. As I see the current images, I can still hear the haunting sound of the terrible winds. The gut-wrenching sorrow hit me almost every time I got in my car and drove somewhere after the storm. Nothing remained the same.

Everyone in the area lost something important. My optimism remained most days, though there were a number of bad days sprinkled in as well. I clung to hope. There’s a favorite passage in The Message version of the Bible that says, “I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.”

In keeping with that emphasis on the positive, I made a list of things I learned through that experience.

10 Things Adversity Taught Me

1. Ask the right questions. "Why me?" is not the right question. Adversity is a hard teacher, and the questions are just as important as the answers. While preparing to teach a new online course, I reviewed an exercise that asked about pivotal events in one’s personal story. As I rated the events on my list, I noticed that 90% were not positive. They were the hard things, but what I learned from them and how they shaped me are deeply positive.
2. Resilience can be learned. Resilience is like a muscle—it strengthens when you’re forced to use it.
3. There’s no small act of kindness. Small things became big things during difficult times. A smile, a kind word—they matter more than ever. If it is within your power to do something kind, don't hold back.
4. Stick together. For years, I've cited the Harvard Life Study that emphasizes the importance of supportive relationships. We need one another. One key to navigating adversity is accepting help. Our neighbors, friends, and family made all the difference to our well-being.
5. Disruption is an opportunity to innovate. Navigating the wreckage required thinking differently, creatively. With no such thing as business as usual, we had to find new ways of seeing and doing.
6. Stress depletes your reserves. I learned that you must find ways to restore yourself, or your health will suffer. Taking breaks and giving yourself room to decompress isn’t optional.
7. De-cluttering is a good thing. We had to pack up our house in about a week when floodwaters rose in the aftermath of the hurricane. It was chaotic and I had meant to clear out those closets for years. Most of us can live well with far less than we accumulate. The most important things in life aren't things.
8. Appreciate beauty. When everything around you looks ugly, seek out beauty. John Muir said, "Everyone needs beauty as well as bread." A sunset, the bloom of a small flower, the harmony in a song— count them as gifts. When I couldn’t find beauty, I created it.
9. Be patient with people. Everyone is carrying a burden. People navigating a disaster are tired, cranky, sleepless - and some are dealing with panic attacks. Trauma is no joke. I learned to be more tolerant than people deserve. I was never sorry for it.
10. Spread hope. Hope is the oxygen of the human spirit. I remember falling out of a tree as a child, having the breath knocked out of me. But I got back up. The difference between children and adults is that a child climbs right back up into the tree. Adults—not so much. Take a deep breath. Everything's going to be okay. Maybe not today, but you'll get there.

Many moons ago, I read Viktor Frankl's Man’s Search for Meaning. It profoundly impacted me. His experience as a concentration camp inmate convinced me that nothing I would ever face could compare to his heinous journey. If he could sustain hope in the darkest place our world has ever seen, hope could hold me steady all the days of my life. The Apostle Paul penned the beautiful truth, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Before Hurricane Michael, I thought disaster recovery meant calling an IT professional to recover data when my computer's motherboard fried. In the aftermath of one of the worst hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S., my perspective had changed.

We're going to make it. Carry on.