who wrote the rain...

i don't usually blog this often, but for whatever reason lately (despite the massive amount of schoolwork to do) i've felt both compelled & inspired to write.

today marked the beginning of easter break.
for those of you who aren't familiar with easter break, let me clue you in: it's not a break.
it's a week off of classes but a week of intense paper-writing...all the while juggling work, travel & time with family. i, personally, have 4 papers/projects to do. this is the first break, however, in the last year and a half that i have not traveled. so the last of the roommates left early this afternoon...leaving me to weather the storms of the week alone...yes, pun definitely intended.

around 4pm today the rain started to fall. i started getting messages from friends informing me of a bad storm headed our way. all day i'd thought it looked like the typical "tornado-weather" day. little did i know it actually was. long, long story short (because it's not the point of the post at all) i very quickly found myself...
without power,
without a tv/radio,
without a computer
& very aware of the fact that i was without my roommates.

when i saw the rain spiraling outside our 2nd story balcony i grabbed a candle, a piper book & all the pillows off my bed and jumped in the tub (all the while thinking to myself - this really isn't going to do much good in a 2nd story apartment).

come to find out...we'd been issued a tornado warning as well as a tornado watch...and wake county was "in a state of emergency" (whatever that means). lee county (right "next door") had several tornadoes touch down & several deaths as a result. several touched down in raleigh, too.

as of sunday morning:
80+ tornadoes touched down yesterday in nc
22+ deaths
several missing
32,000+ still without power close to 24 hours after (power poles & lines completely ripped out of the ground & missing)

our entire apartment complex as well as the connecting neighborhood (& much of wake forest) was without power from 4-10pm...which brings me to my point in writing.

i spent a lot of time in the dark today.
i spent a lot of time alone today.
i spent a lot of time extremely reliant on my phone today.

once it got dark & i could no longer strain to read my articles & books i looked up and saw the moon almost perfectly shining onto my balcony and into the sliding glass door. i was surrounded by candles & the sound of the wind coming through the screen...it was pretty picture perfect. almost instinctively i picked up my guitar and the first song i started playing was...

who wrote the rain
who wrote the sun in
who called your name
where are you running
i'm gonna be there near or far
i'm gonna meet you where you are
who wrote the rain
who wrote the sun in

pretty incredible that the song is called, "you will find Me". He was there today. always is.
sometimes it takes a storm to get us to stop - to drag us away from our phones, computers, friends, whatever...
"sometimes our God seizes a backdrop of darkness in order to accentuate His Light."
no matter what the storm, though, we can find Him there.

later on i left to run an errand and when i returned i saw seminary students everywhere around our dark apartment complex. at almost every building you could see the shimmer of a small flashlight and a small crowd of people...just talking. the light of the moon provided more light than any of us had in our apartments. so for 15 minutes or so i sat in the back of my SUV with the door open just taking it all in.

the moon.
the stars.
the wind.
the voices.

looking around at the darkness i was reminded of my overseas experiences. i was reminded, specifically, of africa. and that's when it hit me like a ton of bricks.
COMMUNITY.
those countries are so communal...they don't live for television, radio, and internet. and when we're forced outside of that, neither do we. in those moments when we're stripped away from those things, we RUN to community.

interesting.
just some thoughts to ponder.
this isn't the typical, well-thought out, flows just perfectly blog.

where do YOU find Him?
when do YOU run to community?