Hermine has come and gone. There are trees on houses. My neighbor has two trees on her house, a 90-foot pine and a smallish oak, about 40 feet tall. We had some minor flooding, not much, but a lot of strong wind, of course, and because this is such a tree-full town, power lines were down everywhere. That was the problem—no power. It’s not just that the temperature was running between 87 and 89 degrees; here, the temperature is not the problem but the humidity. Without air conditioning, every surface is downright tacky to the touch and breathing is difficult. At night, we did not burn candles because they only added to the heat, and as my neighbor said, the humidity was so bad it would have extinguished the flames anyway. Miserable.

And then, after 24 hours, like a miracle it seemed, the power came back on. The fridge was humming, lights were on, televisions blared, internet was back, and a cool breeze flowed from the a.c. vents. God was back in his heaven. Hell was over. I thought, while sitting in the hot dark, This is Mordor. And when the lights came on and the air conditioning resumed, it was a eucatastrophe worthy of the bards.

Less than six hours later, it was as though nothing had happened. Traffic lights were on, and cars were on the streets, cleared now of dangerous power lines; giant trucks had been at work and all the fallen trees were removed from the streets. You could drive around and look at the damage to people’s houses and buildings. But it was all over. The apocalyptic atmosphere that had pervaded the town only a few hours before had evaporated and it was just another day.

It seemed almost unfair. One wanted to say things like “But what about the storm? Where did it go?” It’s an odd reaction to the end of crisis, of catastrophe, of suffering—not matter what the degree. Where did it go? When the power returned and the hot dark was banished, there was an exhalation of relief, a moment of deep gratitude, even joy—but it was only a moment. Everything is normal again now. We are our ungrateful, joyless selves again, oddly feeling a faint, vague loss—almost as though we’ve been cheated of a grief that had been ours and then was taken from us.

I’m reminded of my aunt talking about the day the war ended. The whole country was drunk with joy. But, she said, a week later, it was almost as though the war—with all its suffering—had never happened, and everyone was whining about the rationing, the delay in getting troops home, all sorts of complaining and worrying about looming unemployment. She said it seemed to her that everyone missed the war, when rationing was just doing one’s bit, and when, most of all, there was an anticipation, a waiting and longing, and heroic patience. She concluded that people were better in wartime.

When are we our true selves? During the storms or during the peaceful, air-conditioned calm? Do we secretly crave disasters of one kind or another because we know deep down that we’re spoiled, because we suspect we need deprivation in order to regain a right appreciation of life? Maybe we know that we have no “rights” to any of our countless blessings. Maybe we know we need to lose them in order to find them again. We do this in our relationships—with each other, with ourselves, and with God. Maybe that’s why God lets us wander off and get lost, so that we can experience the joy of being found again. And maybe that’s why we wander.