On days like these, my mother would stand on the porch and ask for a Bermuda High to come down and turn the snow and ice away.

In the thick, sticky heat of summer, she’d pray for a Canadian Low to sweep through and cool the air.

She didn’t call it meteorology.
She called it faith.
And more often than not, the weather shifted.

When I got older, some of my friends picked up the same habit. We didn’t have robes or titles—just house shoes, coffee cups, and enough sense to know the porch was close enough to heaven for our prayers to travel. We called ourselves the Porch-Praying Sisters.

We prayed about the weather, yes—but also about children, marriages, money, bodies that wouldn’t cooperate, and news reports that made our stomachs knot. We spoke our requests into the open air like God might just be passing by and decide to stop and listen.

Today, we’re in the middle of a Virginia ice storm.
Freezing temperatures.
Sleet tapping the windows.
The quiet, low-grade anxiety of Will we lose power? humming beneath everything else.

And maybe that’s what storms still do best.
They set the altar.

They slow us down, pull us inward, strip away noise and options until all that’s left is warmth, breath, and the remembering that we are not in control—but we are not alone either.

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you… when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.” (Isaiah 43:2)

Over the years, we drifted. Life scattered us. Jobs, moves, losses, disagreements, silence. That happens.
But in this current environment—
with ice on the ground, tension in the air, and uncertainty pressing in—
I find myself praying again.
Not polished prayers.
Porch prayers.

The kind that believe faith doesn’t have to be loud to be effective. The kind that remember Jesus said even “faith as small as a mustard seed” can speak to what feels immovable and tell it to move. (Matthew 17:20)

Maybe the weather won’t always change.
Maybe the power will flicker.
Maybe the storm will linger longer than we’d like.
But when a storm sets the altar,
something always moves.
And sometimes…
that something is us.

— Love,  Chelle