Heather and the Hailstorm
I’ll brave hailstorms for deep connections.
As I stepped out of a friend’s apartment one night this week to go see a movie, something large crashed into the street nearby.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I think it was hail.”
My friend said a quick prayer for the car, then we took off.
We hadn’t been on the road long when hail began to play a drum solo on my roof. I tried to shelter under a tree but it didn’t provide enough protection for the car. Then the hail stopped … momentarily. We drove under a bridge, and it resembled a parking lot. Vehicles were parked every which way.
I drove on in the rain, but it wasn’t long before the hail started again. We were stuck out on the open road with limited shelter options. Plus, we didn’t have a lot of time to make it to the movie, so I soldiered on, expecting a broken windshield or worse.
The noise got so loud at one point that my friend covered her ears with her hands.
Have you ever gone to a heavy metal concert and the drum solo lasted ten minutes? The first 30 seconds were cool. The guy’s hair blew in the fake wind created by the fan as the drum kit spun around. You expected the solo to lead to the next song soon. But the guy just kept going. And going. And going. That’s what this hailstorm felt like.
We pulled into the movie theater parking lot, and I tried parking under several more trees, but the wind just pushed the hail sideways onto my car. I drove all the way around the theater, looking for nooks or crannies to hide Heather (yes, my car’s name is Heather). Several cars already occupied the few hideouts that existed, and from what I could tell, it wasn’t helping much anyway.
I dropped off my friend at the front door of the theater and she handed me her jacket to place over my head. I hated to hand a soaking wet jacket back to her once I got inside, but it couldn’t be helped.
After the movie, I expected to find some damage to my vehicle. My friend ran her hand over the pools of water on my roof in search of dents while I examined the windshield and other widows. Best I could tell, Heather didn’t have any new dents or cracked windows, which is a good thing since I plan to sell that car soon. Shhh, don’t tell Heather.
I tend to not let stormy weather stop me from carrying out my plans. More times than not, it just rains. And on the off chance that it hails, well … at least I get a story out of it.
I had a friend, Shawn, who always had nice vehicles (Heather, in case you are listening, I’m not saying you aren’t nice too, so calm down), and every time there was possible hail in the forecast, he wanted to cancel our plans. So I would pick him up and we would go anyway. Once, I think it hailed for a few seconds and he got to say, “I told you so.” But I didn’t have any damage to my car then either.
The thing is, I hate missing experiences with friends. I’m as introverted as they come, but I also need one-on-one company. It helps me process. And it helps me feel seen. I love doing that for others too. I really do. There’s nothing like seeing a spark in someone’s eyes after you have truly heard him or her. It says, “You are my people.” And it says, “You are not in this alone.”
Those are the kinds of connections I’ll brave hailstorms for because they make all the difference in the world.
When Lee isn’t writing essays, devotional books, or Christian fiction, he is a freelance editor, as well as a freelance journalist who has written hundreds of articles for various newspapers and magazines. He’s also a fan of NASCAR, baseball, tennis, books, movies and coffee shops.
