There's a certain sense of vulnerability late at night that you can't help but feel when you are the lone adult in the house.  Unless you are asleep, you are infinitely more aware of yourself and everything around you.  The silence augments the slightest bump in the darkness, and lightning can wake you — abruptly — from the deepest slumber.

About 25 minutes ago, a ridiculously severe thunderstorm passed directly over Raleigh, specifically targeting the eastern side of the suburbs outside the beltline.  In other words, the very heart of the storm passed directly over my house.  I was just about completely out cold when the first flash woke me.  The storm was probably still a good five miles northwest, and I thought little of it.  I closed my eyes…

Flash.                      Rumble.

Flash.                 Rumble.

Flash.        Ruuuuuuuuumble.

FLASH-BOOM.

A booming crack of thunder roared up so quickly after the flash that the two were impossible to separate.  While far from the worst thunder I've ever heard (that title is reserved for the mid-summer thunderstorms over the plains of Texas that literally can shake the concrete slab most of the houses there rest upon), it was enough to make me instinctively reach my hands to my ears.  There was no rumble, just a sharp crack, the very sound of which seemed to actually be visible for just that fleeting moment in the flash on which it was borne.

It's not the thunder itself that scared me.  I've grown up fascinated, nearly obsessed, with severe weather.  Tornadoes intrigue me like nothing else in the universe.   No, it wasn't the thunder, or the lightning, or the storm as a whole.  It was, in that instant, being suddenly and minutely aware of the world just outside my house: tall trees, wide-open skies, and the hill upon which my home resides, making it the tallest structure on the street.  Every possible threat of nature to me, my home and — above all else — my daughter was revealed to me in stark contrast as the thunder roared outside.

As adults, these are the monsters in our closets.  It's the fear of a home invasion, or a fire, or a flood, or any other disaster beyond our control that can strike without warning and do devastating damage.  It's our role as protectors that often leaves us feeling entirely and utterly defenseless in the knowledge that we can only control our own bodies, and nothing more.  All the promises we make to ourselves and our families — that we'll never let anything happen to them, that they are safe with us, that there's nothing to be afraid of — are entirely fantastical.  While saying those things may be comforting not just to those at whom we direct them, but also to ourselves, there's a moment each time you stare into the face of danger that you realize one of two things: either God is in control of your life, or no one is.  No matter how much we try to buy into the illusion of control, the complete lack of it becomes obvious to each of us in the presence of a mortal threat.

For me, God is in control.  No matter how reluctant I am most of the time to admit that fact, it is infinitely more satisfying to know that I don't have to cover my eyes with the fantasy that I have to be the grand protector of all.

What this is driving toward is simple: the same crack of thunder than made my heart skip one beat before pounding out a hundred more than it should have also woke Kaylee, scaring her to death.  As frightening as the known threats can be as an adult, it is undoubtedly the fear of the unknown threat as a child that is the worst thrill known to man.  In a span of time equal to the instant I became aware of the dangers outside my door, I forgot them, at least momentarily.  I was down the stairs and had her in my arms in a period of time that seemed so tightly compressed that it was almost as if I was transported instantly from beneath my own covers to her bedside. 

I am not my daughter's protector; God is.  But, to her, I am the physical manifestation of His loving hands.  I am the one she looks for at every moment of uneasiness, and it is my grasp that calms her again.  As the one she perceives as her protector, the urgency of "being there" brings what feels to me like an out-of-body experience.  When her fever spiked in November to over 105 degrees, I wrote here the next day that I stepped out of myself, out of "dad mode," and instantly separated myself from the emotion of the situation.  It was purely instinctive, knowing that I was going to be of best use to her if I was able to think as the rational protector rather than the emotional parent.  Again, tonight, I stepped outside myself momentarily and snatched her from the grasp of her own fears.

But then, as we sank into the couch, I became dad again.  I became a frightened, vulnerable man holding a frightened, vulnerable child.  In that moment, I felt for the first time in more than half my life the frightened longing for my own parents, who long ago calmed my fears just as I calmed those of my child.  And I came to the realization that my mother and father undoubtedly must have felt the same longings, the same fears, and the same incomprehensible feeling of being so infinitesimally small in a world filled with so many enormous dangers.  In that moment, I finally and truly felt like I had grown into an adult, but at the same time I became a child again.

Because, as I sat there comforting my daughter as she drifted back to sleep, my daughter laid there comforting me.