Relax, it wasn’t THAT kind of thing….although, I do have some experience with–

Nope, nope, nope, stay on track, Cody, don’t go off on one of your weird little tangents this early, just tell the story…

Fine, you’re right

Soooo…last night, something kinda incredible happened. It was something serendipidous, truly an unexplainable moment when mere mortals experience God’s Cinematic Universe play out in real time.

My younger sister had just put her oldest daughter to bed. It was a little after 9:30pm, and the mild thunderstorm outside had just picked up. This, as espected, prompted the seven-year-old, Addie, to plead her case for a later bedtime.

It didn’t work.

Instead, we ended up explaining the whole lightning/count/thunder measurement thing to her. She didn’t understand it entirely, but it did seem to comfort her. And as the fun-uncle, my job was done, so I ventured back into the kitchen to check on my pepperoni/mozzarella flatbread. It was in the air fryer, and was due in about 6 minutes.

Long story short, Addie went upstairs, heard another roar of thunder, turned around and came right back down. Long story even shorter…my sister, TeJay, took Addie back upstairs, and two minutes later, came back down, alone.

We talked about something nostalgic, chit chatted about a similar storm in our childhood, I showed her my new life hack of making flavored soda by combining water enhancing liquid with a can of sparkling water (I know, right? Straight-up-genius!).

And then…Silence. Nothing. For a good, glorious two minutes, nothing happened. Just two peaceful people, existing in the same room, doing their own thing.

I removed and began to cut the flatbread (which was delish, by the way, thanks for asking). TeJay was reading some papers on the counter and gathering random articles of toddler clothing from the crevices of the kitchen.

And then…all of a sudden, I remembered the UMBRELLA.

A twelve-foot blue umbrella, like something out of a beach scene in Weekend At Bernie’s II, that lived between a pair of kiddie pools in the driveway and weighted down by some tan concrete blocks. It was open, I remembered, and a bit too close to her (and her husband’s) new blue mustang. That and it was windy enough to blow a canopy across the backyard.

And then…I came back to my body…only to discover that I was holding a sharp pizza cutter inches from the flatbread, and STARING at the wall, like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

TeJay looked at me and started to ask “what are you–?”

I pointed to the door. “I think the thing, uh, is still open.”

And, yes, the word I was searching for was ‘umbrella.” Unfortunately, my brain was like ‘nope, figure it out yourself, I’m going on break.”

TeJay looked at me, thought about it, miraculously understood me, then said, “oh, yeah, it is.”

And then we both ran outside.

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Wait a minute! Hold up! But before I finish…here is my theory.

Could it be…that TeJay, as a housewife/mother who spends most of her day listening to the incoherent ramblings of an adorable, yet uber-confident, 2 year-old girl, could it be…she, in that moment, somehow tuned her toddler-translation ability to a different frequency, then used it to decipher the incoherent ramblings of her older brother staring at the wall…like a schizo watching Narnia appear…with a pizza cutter in his hand?

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The umbrella was already blown over, hanging over the dog fence. It was near the mustang, but also far enough away…like nothing happened, everything was fine, stop worrying about the car, okay, it’s not important to the story.

I grabbed the pole, pulled it back up, and held it in place as TeJay closed and disconnected it. Then she…

Remember the end of Twister (circa ’96) when Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, outrunning the ‘Finger of God’ class 5 tornado, broke into that old pumphouse, strap themselves to that long black pipe in the ground with their belts, then hang upside down as the tornado destroys everything in its path, you know, except them?

Yeah, that’s what this moment reminded me of…pretty epic.

Anyways, we take the umbrella, and its parts into the garage–and some toys the kids left in the grass–as the wind began to spit droplets. Once we finished cleaning the aftermath (or a decent chunk of it), we ran back into the garage. And then, like two seconds later, that windy sprinkle turned into a f**king downpour. And, no joke, it was like…

WHOOOOOOOSH!

As if God, watching from beyond the firmament, saw us get back inside, then snapped His fingers, and said “Go! Go! Go! Drop it now!”

I was like “Woah.”

TeJay was like “Woah.”

I was like, “I know.”

TeJay was like “Perfect timing!” followed by “What was that?” at me.

“Don’t know,” I said, “just saw a glimpse of it.”

“Wow,” she replied, “your intuition must be, like, evolved, I guess.”

…and SCENE! End of Story! *followed by roaring applause*

So what’s the point?

God is funny. God is mysterious. God knows how to put on a good show. God is, by far, the greatest showman of all time. Ranked!

Don’t believe me? Check out the Bible.

Trust me, that thang isn’t just a book of religious scripture to live by, it’s a collection of legit box office thrillers. Samson and Delilah. Job. The Tower of Babel. King David. Adam and Eve. Fallen Angels descending to earth, mating with the womenfolk, teaching mankind sorcery, ultimately turning all of creation into Sodom and Gomorrah, and prompting God to release the Great Flood.

All of these stories would make a really, great, kickass Netflix series, if done right.

Or Prime. Or HBOmax, I mean, Max, yeah, Max would be a good spot too.

(Back off Kubrick, I called dibs).