VBStressin

STOP!

I stole this from my son-in-law. It reminds me of Baptist business meetings.

180 degrees. It's just a thing.

I suppose the title to this blog is misleading. Let me say that it is not 180 degrees outside. 75 maybe. No sweat. (Pun intended.)

I was sitting outside on the balcony last night after our evening in Vacation Bible School ended. It was cool and the sky was clear above me. The stars made certain that I knew. I found myself on the balcony because, after arriving home, I had glanced at the weather on my laptop and had noticed a rather strong thunderstorm over the middle of Lake Erie and directly off shore of our apartment. Hmmm. Debbie was on the phone and so I made my way through the bedroom and before I could even open the blinds on our balcony door I saw the lightening. This could be cool.

And it was! As I settled into my high-rise lawn chair God's fireworks display began. For the next half hour I watched the lightening dance and flicker to my north, lighting up the lake in ways I had never really seen before. In the flashes I could see that the clouds were multi-layered and incredibly tall. When the cloud-to-cloud lightening was hitting its zenith the reflection off of the water was breath taking. I tried to get a picture but my camera just wasn't fast enough. The picture above is the best that I could do.

It's different, living on the edge of such a vast body of water. I thought about that last night after the last light had been turned off and the last words had been spoken. It's not just the view. That is the good part. However, there is an ironic part to it too.

Believe it or not, you don't have as many places to go. I mean, think about it. Being a suburban adult who grew up as a suburban kid I always had 360 degrees of potential activity. 360 degrees of roaming space. Living on the edge of Lake Erie, while beautiful, reduces your "roaming potential" by 50%! Driving northward is not an option. You can drive southwest but you cannot drive directly west without very tall tires. And you can go northeast or any other direction. But, any way you look at it, you only have half of the menu of directions to choose from. Hmmm. I suppose it is a good trade. View is important. And if I really, really want to drive a northerly route I can do that. I just have to drive a southerly route first.

There are no malls to my north. No restaurants. No stop lights. No intersections. No pedestrians. There is water. Actually, I live on the epidermis of the country. I grew up in the heartland and now I live on the skin. It doesn't mean anything. There is no lesson or deeper truth to this. It's just a thing. And sometimes things are all I have to write about.