Even though it is officially spring I shall always remember our historic snow storm that blanketed our nation in March, 1994.
I wonder if our intermittent spring weather could be leading to an ice storm like the one in the last week of March of 1994 while we were living in Plain Dealing, Louisiana.
All week long I had eagerly anticipated hearing Art Buchwald’s television interview with Barbara Walters.
As our lights flickered I was granted the opportunity to hear the famed syndicated columnist, Art Buchwald, speak of his painful childhood, after his mother’s hospitalization that lasted thirty-five years in a mental hospital and of his stay in seven foster homes, to which he rebelled and ran away at the age of seventeen when he lied to join the Marines. His two sisters were with him, for the interview, because he wanted the world to know he had lied for most of his life saying she had died in child birth rather in a mental hospital.
I listened as he ended his segment of a Prime Time interview on that Thursday night less than two minutes before our lights officially died. I was uplifted in the dark as I recalled what he said: “It helps in becoming a journalist if one is first a foster child.” This affirms my theory of the power of deep pain to spark our creativity.
As limbs cracked and popped on the pine trees from the monumental ice storm my spirit soared! I saw my life, my work, flash before my eyes! It all came together within my mind. I sensed a method to the madness, the chaos of my childhood, one of lack, of living in an orphanage after my father’s death and the head injury that permanently incapacitated my mother to ever be able to function as a mother.
So life’s tragedies have graced my face as I’ve learned to grab hold of my pain, of feeling the flesh ripped from my bones from one tragedy after another. I’ve learned to make the most of it, to turn it around, seizing the moment, of even an ice storm.
With no heat my youngest son, Jeremy, and I put on extra warm ups and caps and savored the moment by telling stories for the next two days.
Today we both remember that special shared ice storm.
When the lights came on I savored my early morning coffee along with my newspaper and I picked up my pen to write more appreciative of what we can learn during the ice storms of our lives because we will all have them.
It’s not what happens to us but how we grab hold of those periods of deep pain and use them as the back drop to support us in our weakest moment.
Later that year I interviewed the late Jasmine Morelock Field, Shreveport artist and author, on my cable television talk show hosted by Comcast. She used the story of the murder of her daughter to minister to people because she saw her story as the tool that God gave her to help hurting people.
The late Ann Welsh Gardner, artist, voiced the same feelings when she said “When our life is easy we become complacent, fat and lazy but when we hurt we choose our medium.”
For Ann and Jasmine their mediums were the canvas and the pen.
For me my tool is writing when I’m in deep moments of despair and when I am on an emotional high and can’t sleep.
Again, it’s not what happens to us but how we turn it around, choosing our medium, sharing our stories, giving others the courage to share their pain!
It adds so much meaning to our lives to reach out, to allow others to know that they are not alone, that it is OK to let others know of their serious depression rather than going off the deep end with no turning back.
God always pulls me through, even keeping the lights on just long enough!
Contact Sarah at [email protected]