Storms...

My friend Dana just experienced what was probably the worst thunder/hail storm of her life. I'm not sure if you've been watching the news at all about the extreme weather and golf ball sized hail in Phoenix but that was it.

Though the hailstones she took a picture of looked bigger than that to me.

And honestly, even if they were slightly smaller than golf balls thousands of them crashing down on your house, car, trees, life, is a lot.

She and all of her neighbors have been discovering new and exciting damage for the past couple of days. Oh the wind blew down the fence, oh the wind split the tree, oh the hail broke the windshield of the car, and the skylights in the house, and the roof itself is trashed and...isn't this so exciting?

Or maybe maddening more than exciting.

Because there was nothing that could have been done about it. There was nothing she could have done to protect her house and the trees and the fences. There was nothing she could have done to make the hail smaller, or to have skipped over her completely. It's just a thing that happened.

And those are the worst.

The things that just happen. The things that show we have zero control over a large part of our lives. We can control how we respond; she's jumped into action, getting things inspected, removed, setting up repairs, setting things back to right as much as possible. But the event itself? Nothing that could have been done.

And that's just the best.

Okay, so the catastrophe isn't the best. But the fact that it wasn't something she did to herself, that it was a literal act of nature. Knowing that you had no way to prevent it means it absolutely wasn't your fault. And that's a gift. Knowing the only thing you have control over is how you respond to the event? That's a good thing.

Because you always have that piece of control.

Like I said, she's in discovery and repair mode right now. Later I imagine she'll be in leave me alone while I read by myself in a cozy corner mode, but for now? She's handling it.

When Katie was little I used to stress that the only person she could control was herself. She could never control how someone was going to respond to her, or how they were going to act, but she did have control over herself and how she reacted to them. I thought I had drilled that into her pretty solidly until one day she had had a terrible experience with someone at school and I asked her what I always say, expecting the answer to be "The only person you can control is yourself" and instead she said through tears, "First we mock."

I laughed so hard it snapped her out of the tears and she laughed with me.

Then we got to the other message, but honestly? First we mock is probably more accurate of a life philosophy than anything else. What do we have control over? How we act, how we view the world, how we function. And first we mock, first we find the joke, first we laugh.

I'm not sure Dana is ready for full on hail jokes just yet, but it hasn't stopped me from making a few other jokes about the world around us.

First we mock.

The only thing we have control over is ourselves.

Sometimes the storms are vicious and all we can do is pick up the pieces when they are over.

Control what you can, manage what you can't.

Find the jokes in everything you can.