Going through storms to get to sunny skies

Most of my friends and family would consider me something of a thrill seeker. I’m no Evel Knievel but I love jet skis, roller coasters, climbing mountains and things of that nature. I didn’t always love those things, however. (Except for the jet skis. I’ve always loved those.) These were things I had to work on overcoming the fear of before I could enjoy them.

For a good chunk of my life, I was terrified of heights. Part of that is probably because of my friend Josh Soffriti pushing me off the highest cliff at Smith Mt. Lake when we were kids, but I digress. Over the years, though, I’ve worked to overcome that fear by walking over tall bridges and climbing various mountain trails. As each year goes by, I find something taller to traverse.

One obstacle, if you can call it that, I had yet to clear was driving over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. That all changed in June. Blair and I took the kids to the Eastern Shore for a weekend vacation. It was the first time for any of us. To get there, however, I had to drive over the 20-mile bridge-tunnel that had lived in infamy in my mind for years as something I would like to avoid doing in life. The thought of being on a fairly narrow bridge over the ocean with no sign of land for over a dozen miles didn’t appeal to me.

Oddly enough, the drive over was easy. I realized most of my fears were overblown. The drive back, however, was a different story. We left Cape Charles in the middle of a storm, the extent of which we wouldn’t realize until we were five miles out in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go. The rain was heavy. The wind was strong. Waterspouts were circling in the ocean alongside us. In fact, the weather was so bad they stopped traffic from coming on the bridge about five minutes after we started our journey over it. It was not a fun time for yours truly.

We eventually made it through the storm, and were greeted with the sunny skies of Virginia Beach once reaching land. Perhaps there’s a bigger lesson in that. All of us will go through storms in our life, but it’s important to keep moving forward to reach those sunny skies waiting for us on the other side.