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Lightning

Lightning (Photo credit: Pete Hunt)

Last night, while traveling home from my writer’s group – which by the way, is a wonderful group! – I had a very frightening experience.

None of us had expected the weather that ascended upon us last night. I guess that translates into none of us bothered to check the weather. Believe me, when I say I wished I had checked it.

When I left my friend’s house to drive home, it was sprinkling. You know the one, the aggravating, not quite rain, which can make a person crazy because it’s hard to see at night with the windshield wipers on a dark night kind of sprinkle. About eight or so miles from home, the lightning and thunder began to roll across the sky in front of me, and then the rain began to fall in earnest. I mean literally pouring down in sheets of rain where you couldn’t see the road. I found myself looking for cats and dogs.The rain was bad enough, but then came the thunder and lightning.

The thunder does not bother me so much, although it can be quite disconcerting, especially when accompanied by driving rain and lightning. What I didn’t expect, and had never experienced before, was the all-consuming lightning. Those are the only words that come to mind to describe what happened. When it lightened, it was as though it made a cone around the car and it was blinding. I’m sure you have had a car with blinding lights – those bright blue-white lights – driving towards you where the headlights were blinding. That is what the lightning was like, only I it surrounded me; the same eye piercing light that the eye doctor shines in your eyes, and we all know how that feels. My entire world, at the moment of the flashes, was a blinding white light. It is so difficult to put into words what the experience was like for me.

The lightning flashes happened about five times. It was so scary that I lost count; there may have been more.

The weather abated as quickly as it began about a mile from home. The road went from slick with rain to absolutely dry. At that point, I quickly hit the gas and went from 30mph to 65mph in no time flat. I wanted to be home, through the gates, and in my house where I hoped to feel safe if the weather was heading south.

Looking back, when I reached the gates to our yard, all I can remember is that my hands ached from gripping the steering wheel, my stomach hurt from nerves, and my mind was exhausted from praying.

Have you ever experienced weather that just completed engulfed you?

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