Love is a Tornado

This morning, my daughter hands me a little card that says her love for me is like a tornado.  She drew a picture of a tornado and wrote, “It’s like this.” 

I turn to her and say, “You mean it’s powerful and destructive?”

She smiles and pretends she’s punching me.  She tries to explain the comparison:  “It gets stronger each day like a tornado gets stronger with each spin.” 

Her tornado is a giant mess of scribble that looks terrifying.  

Love is a tornado? 

That can’t be right.   

My husband adds at breakfast that a tornado is like love because you “never know where it’s coming from.” It can take you by surprise (like how I met him when I least expected it).  

I look at this little family.  I think of the kind of love that breaks the heart and repairs it simultaneously.  I think of the terrifying surrender of it, the giant mess of living lives intertwined. I think of the powerful destruction that love’s wake leaves on the landscape of a heart.  It’s a tornado that rips you apart.

But it’s the kind of devastation you endure because there’s no other way to have it.  It’s the most beautiful storm you’ll ever experience. 

I hug my children–these little tornadoes in my heart–and think about the kind of love I want in my life.  Let it be giant and powerful.  Let it get stronger each day. 

Let it destroy what in me needs to be leveled and remake a pure landscape.  

(Photo:  Public Domain. Credit: OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) via [pingnews])