Volcano!

Let me just preface this by saying that all the volcanic activity that’s been going on is on the complete opposite side of the island from where I am. We are completely safe over here.

On Thursday, Kilauea started erupting in a rather spectacular fashion. Cracks opening up through roads and neighborhoods, spewing steam and lava. All the movie-level dramatic stuff. There have been hundreds of earthquakes all week, we even felt one here (6.9 on the richter scale) Thursday afternoon. (FINALLY! I’ve slept through many earthquakes, and I was excited to finally experience one.) But honestly, it seems like the rest of the world is WAY more freaked out on our behalf than we are.

For me, this is nothing short of miraculous. Because when I was little I was TERRIFIED of natural disasters, volcanoes in particular. I’m not sure where this terror stemmed from, since I grew up in Colorado where the nearest thing we get to a natural disaster is a blizzard, and we barely blinked at those. I remember in maybe second or third grade reading a story about a farmer whose field just cracked open one day and started spewing lava and suddenly he had a volcano in his backyard. I found this alarming in the extreme. They can just pop out of nowhere?!? My mom can tell you how freaked I was the first time we were in Ohio during tornado season. Panic. But my ultimate horror was volcanoes.

Yet here I am, living in Hawaii. I’ve actually hiked through and camped within the crater of a volcano, and now there’s one erupting extravagantly less than a hundred miles away, and I slept like a baby last night. My only thoughts about it are for those who have been displaced from their homes. How did this happen? It was a slow process, and I’m pretty sure my volcano fear melted along with my tornado fear over time as I was continually reminded of God’s protection. Living in Ohio, tornado season was real, but I eventually came to think of it as the only time weathermen were actually entertaining, rather than the most terrifying time of the year. (Seriously, the weathermen get soooo excited when there’s a tornado! It’s kinda cute. And definitely funny.) Somewhere along the line I figured out that a. My fears were pretty ridiculous and unfounded, and b. God’s going to protect me no matter what. It’s just really cool to be sitting here on a volcano right now, as it erupts nearby, and thinking about how complete God’s deliverance is. Thought I’d share it with you guys 🙂