On Being Thankful

I go back and forth from where we live...to Little Rock, 2 or 3 days a week. I have to drive right through Mayflower, Arkansas each way.

Back on April 27th of this year, Mayflower took a direct hit from a tornado and much of the town was leveled. Businesses and homes, ripped off their foundation, and just...gone.

Literally GONE.

The interstate runs right between Mayflower, so there were homes and businesses on both sides. For the first couple of weeks after the tornado, you could hardly get past Mayflower without traffic slowing WAY down, or even stopping completely. Everyone wanted to see.

I mean, it was just so catastrophic.

Three months later, cars speed by. There's not much rebuilding going on. Or, not much that I can see. Or, at least not yet. It's a slow process, and many people haven't decided if they are even going to build in that area again. The school, which cost, like, 12 million dollars or something...built after the last tornado...has never been occupied. And now, never will.

It was hit again.

A lot of the clean-up has been done...altho there are still large piles of debri lining the roads in the town. And even though they have discouraged people from starting fires, almost every day, you can see plumes of smoke all over town...where people are burning their trash. Or their trashed belongings.

There are complete neighborhoods with nothing standing but the new power poles that are being installed. Concrete slabs where homes once stood. Homes where kids laughed and cried, and parents fought and loved; where lives began and lives ended; driveways where kids road their bikes, and where teenagers parked their cars; pastures where livestock once grazed...pastures that now have mounds of fresh dirt, where many of that livestock was laid to rest. There are holes where trees were uprooted from the ground.

Trees that survive a tornado have a certain "look" about them. Most of the trees left standing are like sticks...branches, leaves and bark ripped off and made bare from the strong wind.

Even now, some trees still have pieces of metal or siding wrapped around them.

It hit me...again...that these people? They lost EVERYTHING.

EVERYTHING.

Not only their homes and clothes and cars...but I was thinking about all of the special things that they lost. I don't know...what is that for you?

For me, it might be an item that belonged to my mom or grandmother...or my daughter's wedding dress...or certain baby items from our kids that are in a cedar chest.

Other things special to me are our Christmas decorations. I try to get an ornament from every place that we visit on our travels. I love looking at them every year, and remembering.

And what about all the legal documents? And what about all the pictures?

People from MILES AWAY were finding pictures belonging to the tornado victims.

I felt a little bad complaining about Logan and Morgan's lost wedding pictures. Because people are sending them what they have...cell phone shots and the like. And they have a video. I guess it's just easier to accept losing items due to an act of God, which is out of our control...than losing items due to negligence.

A hundred years ago, when Jim and I got married, we bought a small album of our wedding pictures...it was all we could afford. But we intended to order a few enlarged prints and a wedding ALBUM...when we could. Unfortunately, shortly after our wedding, a fire burned down the studio. The negatives (remember those?) and the rest of our wedding photos...are gone forever. Those "small pictures" we have are now precious to us because they are all we have.

But, forgiveness comes...and peace.

And this post reminds us that our wedding may not have been much, but our marriage can be more.

And at the sight of the tornado...grass is growing. And wildflowers. Birds are finding places to nest.

And life goes on.

And we are thankful.

"Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields, and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the LORD..." Habakkuk 3:17-19