Perspective

Man. What a week! After being out of the office for a month and a half, it's actually been good to be back at the grind stone. Unfortunately, I found myself spending work hours participating in something that I would have never wished for. Tornado cleanup. Prattville, AL received serious storms on Sunday and with it, an F-3 tornado right through a dense neighborhood. Almost 900 homes and 50 businesses were either destroyed or damaged and the devastation is beyond words. They always say on TV that the pictures just don't do scenes like this one justice. I never really understood that until I saw what was once a thriving community of mostly brick homes and charming sidewalks leading to churches and schools. Now it is nothing short of a warzone. A citywide curfew was established to prevent looting, masks are being worn by relief workers to filter out airborne particles like asbestos or fiberglass insulation, and the Red Cross has set up several shelters taking in the homeless like refugees. I walked through doors on walls that led into rooms with no roof. I saw foundations with nothing more. I was thanked profusely by residents for a comparatively paltry amount of support when the mountain of need and cleanup was overwhelming. More than anything, I gained a new perspective. As I told some former students, perspective is often costly and painful to attain yet invaluable and strengthening to retain. Everything can be lost in an instant. There is no time to decide what's important and what isn't. If your priorities are not in line already, you won't have the opportunity to put them in line when life happens. These people lost everything - almost. In the midst of the disaster, there were countless miracles. The miracle of a couple who housed several pets and had four other folks over when the storm hit - they survived. The miracle of a secretary who had an unspoken inclination to move from their typical safe area to the middle of her living room - their safe area collapsed and they survived as the storm literally tore everything that wasn't breathing away from her. The miracle that no one was killed throughout this tragedy. So, here's a new perspective - was it really a tragedy, or just another glimpse of God's power and His holiness? I know what I believe. God Bless ya'll.