tornadoes

What I Love About Sunday

It’s no secret to y’all that I am a country girl through and through. And being the country girl that I am, I love me some good ol’ twangy country music.

One of my favorite songs ever, ever, ever is Craig Morgan’s, “What I Love About Sunday.”

I feel like my day today has been a “What I Love About Sunday” day.

I woke up to rain. Lots of rain. Like a torrential downpour of rain.

But I was ok with that. Torrential downpours of rain don’t really exist in Kansas. I savored the moment.

The tornado sirens went off this morning too. A tornado warning was issued and the RD of our house told us to stay inside until it expired.

Wudn’t gonna happen.

I was dressed up. I was putting on makeup. And I’ll be danged if I wasn’t going to go to church. So I left the house when I was good and ready to go. There was no wall cloud, no rotation, no nothing. It was fine.

It rained all through church.

I was distracted all through church.

But not because of the rain. Because I thought I’d accidentally locked my keys in my car. Which was completely not my fault.

Nope, not my fault. I can’t tell you the story because it would take ten years, but trust me, it wasn’t my fault.

After talking to everyone after church, I nervously approached my car and pulled on the back driver’s side door. It was locked. My heart sank. I have never locked my keys in my car before. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

So I went to the front driver’s side door. It was unlocked. Thank the Lord.

I drove back home. Went to Walmart. Made breakfast for lunch with a friend. Found out that homemade hash browns will turn out sticky and gross unless you squeeze all the liquid out of them before frying them. Took a nap on the couch as a second round of thunder and rain rolled in.

Good stuff.

I came back to my house a quarter after four and my lovely housemates were just starting The Blindside. I curled up on the couch. Ate cookie dough dip. Laughed and enjoyed doing nothing.

This is what I love about Sunday.

Have hope

Have hope

“And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.”   –Psalm 39:7

 

I have been following the severe weather outbreak across the Midwest over the last several days and the devastation is appalling. Tornadoes are nothing new to this Kansas girl, but even with as many storms as I’ve been through, I still can’t get used to seeing broken homes and broken lives. Scenes like those in Joplin, Mo. are absolutely horrific and my heart hurts for the people whose lives have been so abruptly changed.

I can’t say I know how they feel. I’ve never been personally affected by a tornado. My home has never been shattered to pieces. My possessions have never been blown miles away by the wind. I can only imagine the pain that follows having your life smashed and scattered, leaving you to try and pick up the pieces of whatever you can find.

I imagine a lot of people are feeling lost and hurt. And waiting. For an absolution. For redemption. For peace.

I believe the Lord allows everything for a purpose. We may not know what that purpose is right away, maybe we will never know. But it’s during times like these that we need to put all our strength and faith in the Lord and hope in him.

I remember when an EF-5 tornado wiped the town of Greensburg, Kansas off the map on May 4, 2007. Greensburg is only an hour from where I live in southwest Kansas, so the storm was a pretty big deal in our area for a long time. I traveled to Greensburg a few weeks after the tornado ripped its path through the town. Here are some photos.

Sorry for the low quality of the images. My computer crashed a few months ago and I lost some of the images stored on my hard drive, these included. A friend was able to recover some of them for me, but they were super compressed. It happens. But I think you will still be able to get a pretty good idea of the state of shambles this town was reduced to.

This one really hurts my little farm girl heart. These used to be such pretty combines…

And farming implements. Tossed together and tangled like toys in a child’s toy box.

Even though the homes of the people of Greensburg were crushed, their spirits were not.

They had hope.

They knew the process would be long. And hard. But they began rebuilding.

And now, four years later, they’ve come a long way.

Here is all that was left of Greensburg High School four years ago.

Here is the new Kiowa Country High School. The towns of Haviland, Mullinville and Greensburg consolidated and built this new, state-of-the-art high school at the site of the old Greensburg High School.

They even put in a wind turbine to generate power.

There is still a lot of work to do in Greensburg. Amidst the brand new hospital, high school, Dillions grocery store and Best Western hotel, trees can still be seen with missing limbs, stairs still sit on foundations and lead to nowhere. Signs of lives once lived and destroyed but never restored.

But slowly and surely, the resilient people of this town are rebuilding. They are making their town better than it used to be. They keep hoping.

I pray the people of Joplin, the people of Canadian County, Oklahoma and everyone else effected by this year’s tornadoes have the strength to keep going.

I pray they have hope.

 

Much love,

kskristy

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