Sometime between ten o’clock and midnight, something woke me. I’m not sure exactly what it was; sometimes it doesn’t seem to take much. Other times, it takes something on the order of a freight train running through the living space below me. Whatever it was, I almost immediately became aware of the sound of strong wind.

Now, admittedly, the sound of strong wind isn’t a rare phenomenon in Kansas. But, wind strong enough for a deaf man to hear is another matter.

“Can’t be the wind,” I mused to myself, “considering how deaf I am… that would take something like a tornado… pretty sure we aren’t having a tornado… are we?!” After a moment or two of my murmured wonderings, I decided to get up and check it out. Might still have time to make it to the basement…

I stepped out into the hallway and over to the door opening onto the flat roof of the back porch. Lightning flashed constantly. I opened the door and looked out and quickly realized it wasn’t wind I’d been hearing; it was uninterrupted thunder. Which kind of made sense given the uninterrupted lightning.

It’s not the first time in my life that what I thought was happening turned out to be something else. Sometimes the reality was better than the perception, sometimes the other way around. Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel really is the better day we’d hoped for. Sometimes, it’s a freight train and we’ve barely time to get off the tracks before it smashes us. Other times, it might just be a goat eating a flashlight.

Whatever it is, it’s often a good idea to prudently investigate. If it is that better day, it’s good to not get in too big of a hurry and trip over the trestles on our way to the end of the tunnel. You know, when the bright light of expectation blinds us to the challenges that still lie between us and that glorious goal. Be kind of a shame to cripple ourselves right at the threshold of a wonderful new day.

But not nearly as big of a shame as it would be to give up on it.