What is important?
I mean, what is truly important to you?
Is it your iPad or car? Your house? The collection of antique salt and pepper shakers from your great aunt?
What if all those things were just suddenly gone? In a matter of minutes you find that all you have left is the clothes on your back and your family. That is all. Your car is upside down several yards away, your house is in shambles around you, all your belongings are scattered to the four corners of the earth (or it sure looks that way).
Three years ago on May 22, 2011 this became the sudden reality for the residents of Joplin, MO. Many people lost everything they owned.
That day taught me so much. While my home was spared, we live about eight blocks from where the damage began. We are about fifteen blocks as the crow flies from where the old St. John’s Hospital stood. We have friends who lost their homes and cars. The business my husband worked at was in front of the Wal-Mart that was destroyed and that building collapsed in on itself. If he had been at work that day, I would likely be a widow as the building fell in on the hallway where they would have sought safety. The following summer is a blur with working relief. First in the kitchen at church making sure that survivors and volunteers and emergency workers had hot meals; and then providing childcare for the volunteers from our church.
Through that time, I learned that what we own is just stuff. Yes, some may have more sentimental value than other things. Some of it may be worth more money than others. However, in the end, it is all just stuff. Stuff will deteriorate and break and, in the end, you can’t take it with you. I learned that things can so easily be replaced. And that we have way more than we need as a society. As the three year anniversary of the tornado approaches, I find myself looking at stuff and realizing that we don’t need so much.
Family is what truly matters. After the tornado, I would get weepy hugging my children and tucking them into bed, realizing that so many other moms no longer were able to do so. I hugged my husband tighter knowing that, if it had been a work day, I would likely have been made a widow. So many people lost loved ones on that day, and I realized that all the stuff in my house meant nothing if I had lost those I love the most.
While the tornado itself caused so much grief and damage, it did quite a bit of good. The city of Joplin banded together to aid each other and dig out of the rubble. We had people moved from all over the world (one volunteer came from Japan as a way to say thanks to the Americans who came to their aid after the tsunami) to come and help us clear away the rubble and start to rebuild homes and lives. Churches opened their doors and worked together to help those in our community who found their lives upended. Strangers became friends as people opened their homes to those who were needing a place to stay.
Through it all, humanity banded together. We see so much bad coming from society in the news on a daily basis that it is hard to remember that people can work together for good.
While it has been three years since the tornado wiped out a good portion of town, and a lot has been done since then, a lot still remains to be completed. We still have swaths of empty lots waiting for homes and businesses to be rebuilt. Trees are still showing the damage of the extreme winds. Trees are still being replanted. Yards are still being cleaned up from being contaminated from lead from the mining of years ago that the winds redeposited. The high school should be finished for this fall for students to finally return from the temporary classrooms at the mall. St. Johns is now Mercy Hospital and it is still being rebuilt in a new location. People still get absolutely terrified of the slightest thunderstorm to come through.
Yet, through it all and what remains to be finished, I still see the goo. I see the people coming together and helping each other. I see the churches living out their beliefs by serving those less fortunate, I see people not taking each other for granted. Through the pain and the heartache, good came from the trials.
I’m reminded of this quote from Anne Frank: “I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.” Beauty from ashes. Beauty where you don’t expect it. Learn to look for it, for it is there, even in the hardest and most miserable of trials.