Leftovers...

I don't want to be rude....just (surprise!) honest here with a sincere disclaimer:
If you're sick and tired of hearing about the tornado......you probably ought not read this post.

Just a fair warning because I hate the thought that I'm the cause of eye rolls and heavy sighs and grunts of disgust.

(I get enough of that with my pre-teen and 5 year old.)

To be completely honest (again)....I'm sick of hearing about the tornado too.

It's over people....
It's been almost a year....
Strap on those big girl panties and
MOVE ON.

Seriously.

When I see the remaining smashed up untouched buildings around town I get a little irritable. 

Let's smash and crumble and pile and remove that debris folks....we all know the routine by now.

We've all seen the signs flashing on every major road this month:
DEBRIS REMOVAL DEADLINE APRIL 2something!

When I am at the store and get held up in the checkout line because people are retelling their "Where Were you When" stories I no longer feel quite as patient as I did the first few months after May.

When people ask me if I was happy with our insurance company and I have to explain to them that we still haven't received a CENT on content and I am still filling out appeals and receipts my shoulders tense up with the frustration at the repetitive state of stress these pain in the.... goofballs have chained me to.

When I go into stores to pick out things for our new house and the lovely workers ask me if we're remodeling because of tornado damage I cringe.

I don't want to revisit it anymore.

We are moving forward.
We are focused on what we've gained.
We are grateful for what we have.
We are immersed in our normal (not even a "new" normal anymore...right?").
We are simply living our lives.

Right?

At my boys' school they have an art fair every year.
Each student in the elementary classes draws a picture...and they all have to include the same elements in their own creative variations.
This year the kids had to draw a gorilla, an elephant and a giraffe.

I always like wandering through the halls and seeing the fun scenes everyone has concocted.
Elephants playing tennis,
Gorillas rowing canoes,
Giraffes neck-wrestling.

Then I came upon the elephant being sucked up by a tornado while the giraffe exclaimed (via a bubble over it's yellow head), "Oh no....not another tornado!"

Then we had thunderstorms this weekend and my nephew (who is literally not afraid of ANYTHING) hid behind a door so I wouldn't see him crying and shaking.

Then I watched some show on the Weather Channel about how they rate tornadoes on the EF scale based on damage caused.  They simulated how an EF-4 knocked down interior walls....and I had a startling vivid memory of how the big inside wall of our foyer had been knocked over so we could see through the ceiling.

When these things happen....you (I) deal with them. 
You smile sadly at the poor elephant and thank God that the kiddo can express himself in art.
You hug a nephew and explain how we have weather alerts and will let him know when/if it's time to worry then take him outside and let him roll in the mud and play Navy Seal until he's not scared.
You pray a prayer of thankfulness and change the channel.

But then...
When you're not expecting it....
Something wrenches your insides and you have to go to a quiet room and figure out why you just want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Too many "reminders" in one day?
Too many instances of feeling helpless?
Too little sleep?
Too much insurance hassle?
Too much other stress?

I don't know.

But I do know that it's not just me.

(I may be a little "not-normal"...I may have neuroses aplenty...I might have serious (matching and cute) emotional baggage....but this time I do have plenty of company in this particular arena.)

Sitting at my in-laws pool this weekend my father-in-law (who is not really an emotional guy at all) told me that the weather that day reminded him of the afternoon of May 22nd.

My dear friend told me that she is terrified of the approaching storm season.

Another sweet friend changed important travel plans last weekend because of the threat of severe weather....she was afraid to be away from her kids if a storm happened.

A good friend called me to offer their home (with many basement rooms) to us any night there were storms....and said she just felt she had to make sure I knew it was available.

And there are more stories.
More people who seem to be a little jittery.

Is it because the storm season is starting?
Is it because the "anniversary" is approaching?

Maybe both?

And this isn't just people who were actually "in" the tornado.
It's everyone who lives in this town and was impacted.
All of us.

We've lived through it.
We've victors.
We have put our lives and the lives of our loved ones in God's hands and we're comfortable with that.

But....
When the Weather Channel says:
"Live Threatening Storms Approaching!!!!"

We get a little sickly tremble-y on edge.

So what's the point of this rambling post?

Maybe it's just to say.....
Let's give ourselves a break.
Take a step back.
If you need a moment.....take it.

And maybe try to be sensitive to each other.
If someone leaves work early to get their kids from school early because yucky weather is approaching.....
Don't judge.
Just love them.....and pray for the spirit of fear to go away from them.

If someone goes into a loooooooong story about how their new dress/sweater/shoe/whatever that you just complimented is actually a replacement from the one the tornado sucked away.....
Don't groan.
Just love them....and pray for quietness and peace for them.

And if someone snaps "No thank you we're fine!" when you explain to them that their new fixtures will all be discounted because they lost their home to a tornado (not mentioning any names like myself here...) then walks away in tears.....
Don't take away the discount.
Don't take it personally.
Just know that they're working through things the best that they can.

And we ARE moving on.

We really are.

But sometimes we may find that a little bit of debris got left...
And we may trip over it....
But we'll get back up and keep on keepin' on.

And for me...
My gratefulness is very prominent.
My praise and thankfulness to my amazing God won't stop......
And I'm very happy he loves my old messed up self.

And I'm happy for discounts.
And the wedding cake concrete at Shake's.


(And THIS SONG....I'm awfully grateful for this song too.)

It's Good to be Used...

Wow.
It's been a while since I blogged.
Now why oh why could that be?!?!

Could it have something to do with my 3 psychotically high energy nut-jobs precious angels?

How about our current ripping to shreds of anything usable cautious gutting of our soonsomeday-to-be-forever house?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we stayed up until 11:50 the other night using two (count 'em...two) snow sleds, an entire roll of packing tape, 3 trash cans and a soup jar to make a redneck water divert-er because our fishbowl was leaking really badly in the rainstorm and we haven't had time to get that piece of the roof fixed?

Might it have been the 24 page appeal I had to write our insurance company regarding the 120 out of 610 items that they depreciated 50% -80% even though they were brand new?

Perhaps it's because I had to spend several hours "dealing" with the....shall we say....issues that RH's puppy had on the main floor, down the stairs, on the landing (including the wall...huh?) down the next set of stairs at the bottom and into and throughout the storage room?

Well...whatever the reason...it's been a while and I apologize for not sharing our spring break story more quickly like I promised so many sweet friends.

So.
As the local and national news reported....after the tornado hit us in May
THOUSANDS
of volunteers came to Joplin to lend a hand.

Some of them rebuilt entire homes...
Some of them handed out water...
Some of them helped people find their belongings....
Some of them adopted homeless dogs...
Some of them passed out sack lunches...
Some of them gave out moving boxes...
And many of them prayed and gave their shoulders and ears.

These amazing people are one of the reasons that we--as a city---were able to withstand the chaos that the tornado caused.

For our family personally, it meant more than the world to receive goodies and cards and calls and prayers and messages from people---both known and unknown--all over the country.

And we told each other that
(although we fervently hoped and prayed a storm like this would never happen again)
IF tornados struck somewhere nearby....
WE SHOULD GO LEND A HAND.

WE should be the ones offering support.

Well....'ol mother nature may have had a nice rest this winter...
But she sure as heck came roaring out her cozy little nest in a very foul mood.

On March 2nd a series of storms ransacked Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Indiana and Kentucky.

We watched the TV in a sick sense of shock....
grieving for them as we relived the terrifying sensations ourselves.

And we knew....
That although God certainly hadn't caused this to happen...
He most definitely was presenting us with a chance to serve.

So we decided that since our family dynamics don't lend themselves well to a clean-up or demolition crew (although they kids are REALLY good at demolishing my attempts at organization!) we would have to find another avenue to "serve" with.

And since the news reports showed that many volunteers had already flocked to the affected areas, we came up with the idea to do something similar to what we'd done for the volunteers in Joplin this last summer.

We put out some messages asking if anyone might want to provide some baked goodies or cards with prayers and words of encouragement for the tornado survivors.

And wow.
The outpouring of love was AMAZING.

Our entire eating room was OVERFLOWING with cookies and breads and muffins and cookies and CD's of encouraging songs and cards and hand-decorated bags and cookies and messages and stickers and cookies.

And cookies.

(and as an aside I HAVE to say this:  Yes...we (Joplin, that is) were VERY fortunate to have have so many people willing to help us...but this made is SO obvious to me how immense our sense of gratefulness for that help was.  Because the moment people had a chance to "pay it forward"....they sure sure sure did.  This city....these people......wow.)

Then we loaded up the car and headed for Louisville.

From there we went North to Maryville and NabbIndiana.

These towns were little....and pretty much wiped out.

Now I'll tell you....it was VERY different from here.
Those were "typical" tornadoes....in that they "jumped" and "hopped" from place to place.
The places they touched down were horribly battered and destroyed...
but the storm didn't stay on the ground like it did here.

So that meant that in some places there were people out gardening in their untouched yards just 2 homes down from a concrete debris laden wiped-out slab of a house.

An area that was hardest hit in these towns looked like a block or two of Joplin.

It actually made me realize (and i guess although I knew I didn't really know....you know?) how bad our storm really was.

So in Nabb we found a church that was serving as base for all the volunteers to organize and orient themselves.  

We talked with them about where they recommended we should go....and they gave us some direction and invited us to come back at lunchtime.   They had been (and would continue to) have a team of people serving hot lunches to volunteers and survivors.   But...as the church lady explained...they didn't have desserts.

A-ha.

Got that message, Lord.

Guess what we just so happen to have in the back of the car?

The team was so excited....and it was so cool to know we were being used.

We left them with a bunch of goodies and many of the copies of letters to hand out to people and then drove to Henryville.

It's a bigger city and we were able to connect with some people on an individual basis.

We handed out some cookies and bags with CD's and letters.
People saw our "Restore Joplin" shirts and asked us how WE were doing.

Humbling.

We also heard people's stories.

We listened to a man tell about how his kids were on the school bus whose driver saw the tornado coming and got the kids off and into the shelter of a stranger's basement, saving their lives. This man started shaking as he talked about how he didn't know if his sons were alive for a while.

I got it.

We talked to a man who was trying to find some salvageable landscape flowers to give his parents who had lived in that pile of rubble for 50 years.

I got it.

We spoke with a man who said that his house had been less than a block away from the DZ and how he couldn't believe how lucky he was.

I got it.

And at the end of these conversations....we were able to do something even more meaningful than share a cookie. (although those were some dang good cookies...not that I sampled any!)

We were able to share with them that :
it does get better...
life will go on....
it's essential to realize how close God is at this moment....
things will begin to eventually make sense....
the fog will begin to lift...
and....one day...there will be a new normal.

And we could look around at the chaos....
we could smell that horrible-never-to-be-forgotten-awful wet insulation mixed with pine smell...
see the orange vested people digging through rubble...

And know how far our hometown had come.

What a gift for us.

Then we came upon another big tent at a church where the Catholic Charities were serving hot meals.

Again we chatted with them and told them what we were doing.

They asked us if we possibly had any extra desserts because they were all out, and they expected to serve meals for the next several weeks.

Yeah....we got your desserts right here!

So we unloaded into their trailers and shared a meal with some really neat volunteers (and some really good bratwurst).

I am really glad we went.
I want my kids remember how it felt to step out of our comfort zone.
I hope this can be a baby step for my family in learning to look for God's plan instead of our own.

I am so in awe of and thankful to all of my amazing friends who baked and baked and baked and baked.....what wonderful people whom I am so blessed to know!


Then we decided it was time to let the kids be kids and get away from that tornado puke smell that they all remember too well so we left Indiana and drove South.

We took them to a seedy honky-tonk bar in Nashville and let them put money in the singer's tip jar and request horrible country music.
(that particular endeavor may have been more out of MY comfort zone than theirs....they areRH's kids after all!)
We rode in a tacky horse-drawn carriage and I ate held Carolyn's ice cream so she could help "drive".
We cruised on the General Jackson and listened to more oh please shoot me now lovely country music.
We stopped in Memphis for some Rendezvous BBQ.

And we managed to hit 6 states in 4 days.

Overall....a pretty dang good spring break.

So it's back to "reality" now.
But in all honestly....
I'm a little concerned that my particular reality includes 2 snow sleds taped to my round windows.