Gird up your loins now, like a man
Preparing for Hurricane Milton
I want first to say I’m very grateful for the messages I’ve received from so many friends and family as we prepare for Hurricane Milton. I may be slow to respond over the coming days as we finish our preparations and then evacuate a bit further north and more inland, and as we likely lose power for some time between now and Friday.
The first hurricane that posed a serious threat after we moved to Florida was Hurricane Irma in 2017. We put up our hurricane shutters for the first time; they’re the color of ace bandages and cast an odd sepia tone on the inside of the house. I think it was maybe a Category 1 storm by the time it carved its way up Florida to us. The day after, we went for our usual walk around the neighborhood and saw plenty of debris, one fence blown over, and a porch felled by a tree.
There was another hurricane we put the shutters up for, but I can’t remember which one. Our son was born in 2022 right between Hurricanes Ian and Nicole; we were worried that he might be born a couple weeks early and the midwives would not be able to come to our house due to the windspeeds, but it all worked out.
All this is to say that I think I’ve become somewhat used to hurricanes, in the way that my younger self was somewhat used to the tornados that blew through Indiana. But I am nervous about Hurricane Milton and the power it’s bringing. Each previous storm, we’ve battened down the hatches at home, but my gut tells me this time getting out is the better plan.
As much as the hurricane requires a lot in preparing the house (shutters, charging the phones and batteries, gallons and gallons of water), I’m also trying to take a little time to prepare spiritually too. The hurricane comes after a brief and terrible advent, days of anxiety lit more by flashlight than candles.
I keep coming back to the beginning of Job 38, when God finally answers Job’s persistent questioning over why he has been fit to suffer:
Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said:
Who is this who darkens counsel
with words of ignorance?Gird up your loins now, like a man;
I will question you, and you tell me the answers!Where were you when I founded the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.Who determined its size? Surely you know?
Who stretched out the measuring line for it?Into what were its pedestals sunk,
and who laid its cornerstone,While the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?Who shut within doors the sea,
when it burst forth from the womb,When I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling bands?When I set limits for it
and fastened the bar of its door,And said: Thus far shall you come but no farther,
and here shall your proud waves stop? (Job 38:1-11)
To be honest, I’m not experiencing Job level loss (and if I’m lucky, we’ll make it through Milton unscathed), and I’m not experiencing Job level response either. My own version is more trying to answer my four year old’s questions. Yet in that, a confusion similar to Job’s creeps up on me. Why is this happening? Why is this happening to us, to my kids? To all the other families in the path?
The “answer,” such as it is in Job, is unsatisfying, unsettling, and yet also promising. Chapters 38-41 largely feature God disclosing to Job the vastness of God’s creation and God’s role therein, all in comparison to Job’s beloved if miniscule universe of concern. It reads as though Job ought not worry his little head it, and certainly ought not to question. Job even backs down at the beginning of chapter 42, submitting to God’s might (although there is lots of debate on how best to translate the key verse, 42:6, which the NAB renders “Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.”).
Yet more striking to me is God’s response to Job’s friends who, after a week of silent solidarity, spent the remainder of the book essentially telling Job “you must have done something!” God burns with anger at Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, saying to the first “My anger blazes against you and your two friends! You have not spoken rightly concerning me, as has my servant Job.”
Who is Job to question God, but also who is Job that has spoken rightly of God?
To be clear, I have no answers here. There’s just something reassuring to me, tonight, in holding together that (a) in asking God “why"?” I might still be doing something right and that (b) even this storm, bursting forth from the Gulf of Mexico, pales in comparison to (even as it is part of) God’s providence.
If you made it this far and you wouldn’t mind, say a prayer for us and everyone else riding this out in Florida. If you need a scripted one, here’s a prayer my diocese has on their website:
Our Father in Heaven,
through the intercession of Our Lady of Prompt Succor,
spare us during this hurricane season from all harm.
Protect us and our homes
from all disasters of nature.
Our Lady of Prompt Succor,
hasten to help us.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Coming soon, I hope to have the next Celluloid Christ post, on Mary Magdalene (2018), out next week or so. Two hurricanes back to back have delayed what I thought would be finished a couple weeks ago.
Praying for you and all my St. Leo friends!