A Close Strike

Last night was one of those nights that start off ordinary and end with your heart wide open.

We went to bed expecting thunderstorms. The forecast called for lightning and thunder—severe, even—but the evening was still. Quiet. We drifted off under calm skies.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke to a strange sound: soft, irregular taps on the tin roof of our cabin’s storage shed, just outside our loft window—we often leave it wide open because we like the cool night air drifting in, the sound of the forest around us. The drops were sparse at first. Staccato. You could almost count them.

Then, as I lay there listening, the tempo quickened. It soon turned to a downpour. I reached up and shut the window, worried the rain might start blowing in through the screen. But then I hesitated. I wanted to hear it. Call it a obsession with thunderstorms! So I cracked the window back open—just a few inches.

And that’s when it struck.

Literally.

A bolt of lightning exploded so close—either on the tin roof below our window or somewhere frighteningly near. The flash blinded me. For a moment, I couldn’t see. And then when I could, it felt like there was a film over my eyes. The simultaneous thunder wasn’t a rumble. It was a crack—a deafening, jolting sound that slammed through the cabin. I jerked back. Sara bolted upright beside me and shouted something inaudible.

We sat there, stunned.

My first thought was fire. Had something caught? Was the shed burning? Or the forest? Or maybe the fifth wheel parked about a hundred feet away? I grabbed a flashlight, stepped out into the pouring rain, and did a walk around the cabin, bracing for smoke or flame.

Nothing. Just rain.

Back in bed, the adrenaline still rushing, I couldn’t sleep. I lay there for over an hour, thinking about how close we had come to being struck by lightning. And how utterly powerless we are. How fragile. There we were, heads beside a wide-open window, remembering stories of lightning striking people indoors. Through glass and screens.

It felt near-death.

Oddly, it was the only strike of the night that was anywhere close to us. There were other distant flashes, but no thunderclaps that we could hear. Just that one. As if the sky aimed a single warning shot, right at our heads.

This morning I woke up with a slight headache. A faint ringing in my ears.

But I’m alive.

And thankful.

And reminded—again—that trust isn’t something you carry once and for all. It’s something you keep coming back to. 

Even when lightning strikes.

Especially when it does.