Written by Stephanie Ellison

Recently I noticed a photo shared by my high school teacher Mrs. Cashell. As I stared at this picture of the storms colliding I found it to be a beautiful metaphor for my own life and for my work. The image felt symbolic of the way community care, family, and healing can look when seasons begin to change.

One storm represents the dust. A person moving through life aimlessly, breathing in survival and coughing it back out with every exhale. Dry. Exhausted. Every gust of wind carrying years of grief, fear, instability, loss, and hazy vision.

The dust carries the memory of drought. Every particle restless and airborne, like lungs breathing too fast after unbearable pain. The question lingers in the suffocating air:

Is this how life will always feel?

Then another storm begins moving toward it.

Rain.

Not to destroy the dust, but to meet it molecule by molecule.

The rain becomes the drink longed for by a body that has never fully tasted goodness. Tiny drops of H₂O wrapping themselves around scattered particles, making what was once chaotic finally heavy enough to settle.

The rain does not shame the dust for rising.  It simply gives it something to cling to, hope.  What once choked the lungs becomes grounded.  What clouded vision becomes fertile soil.

Oh, those moments when the dust storm meets the rainstorm, Messy. Loud. Emotional. Confusing.

I often say people from hard places can carry dust storms inside of them. The families who collide with them and try to love well represent the rain, showing up with patience, consistency, nurture, oxygen, hope, and the kind of love that softens hardened ground.

Healing is rarely clean when these storms collide. I have witnessed love and pain existing in the same picture.

When we scatter seeds into soil, we trust that despite the elements, something will grow. Visibility may be low but growth is quietly happening underneath the surface. Always.

If we slow down long enough to observe the families around us, we may notice our neighbors desperately trying to hold one another together while carrying completely different weather systems within them.

Even there in the messy, beauty exists. The dust does not stop the rain from coming.  It braces for impact, slowly learning the storm may have arrived to help it breathe again.  The rain settles the dust.

Maybe that is what community, foster care, and family are supposed to look like. Not perfect skies, but people willing to stay when the atmosphere grows heavy.

Healing is not the removal of the dust. Sometimes healing is what happens when living water collides with broken particles and teaches the value of rest.

Personally I have known what it feels like to carry the memory of drought, to feel scattered, exhausted, restless, and desperate just to breathe clean air again.

I have been the rain trying to show up gently for others with consistency, nurture, and hope while learning healing cannot be forced. 

I remain grateful.

Grateful for the people who did not shame the messy, dirty me when I struggled to stay grounded. Grateful for the collisions that felt chaotic and emotional but softened hard places in my heart. Grateful that what once felt unsettled and unclear did not stay there forever. 

Thank you to the rainstorms that stayed long enough to help me breathe again.

If you are the dust storm or the rainstorm I love you. 

To Mr. & Mrs. Cashell, I remember the storm, the trailer, the dimly lit candle I held after the power went out, the tears pouring from my tightly closed eyes, and the prayer I prayed when I was 16, alone, and barely holding on. I remember the loud knocking at the door and the fear of everything around me colliding at once. 

I also remember your words. I remember how your daughter Maddi (around 4 years old) gave up her bed for me. I remember the Cheerios and the milk. I remember the disbelief of it all, while at the same time feeling a very real peace wash over me. Your kindness in the middle of my chaos.

That is what I think of when I see the collision of rain meeting the dust.

❤️Stephanie Ellison