Before and After

If you know me at all, or if you've read my posts during springtime weather season in Kansas, you know that I have a perfectly normal, healthy, realistic, not-in-the-slightest-bit-debilitating fear of tornadoes. I also won a gazillion billion dollars in the lottery and bought myself the original Magnum P.I. red Ferrari I've always dreamed of owning. Not. There's not a shred of truth in the words you just read … not one itsy bitsy shred of truth. I most definitely, beyond the shadow of any doubt, did not win the lottery or buy the sweet red sports car driven by Mr. Selleck himself all those years ago on the famous TV show. And, though it pains me to admit it, my fear of tornadoes remains completely, totally, unequivocally, over-the-top irrational in every way.

While I know exactly from whence my desire to win the lottery and own a red Ferrari comes, I cannot definitively say what prompted my overwhelming fear of being sucked up into a tornado and whirled to death. I suppose I could attribute at least a portion of my irrational tornadic fear to the classic film "The Wizard of Oz," which I first viewed on a Sunday evening when I faked being sick so I could stay home from church and watch it. After all, directing partial blame for my current over-the-top fear of the massive swirling storms toward a movie I played hooky from church to watch 50-some-odd years ago does quite appeal to my Southern Baptist upbringing regarding the consequences of lying. I do find it difficult, however, to justify in my adult mind that a loving God would consider instilling such a debilitating fear of tornadoes within me for all time as just punishment for lying to my dad about being sick so I could miss church and watch TV. But alas, I digress.

Last weekend, I traveled with my son Brad to the town of Greensburg, Kansas, to attend the funeral of my son-in-law Barrett's father. I had never been to Greensburg before and it was every much as small-town America as I had imagined it would be. The people were friendly and eager to help us in any way they could, and the shopping opportunities were quite limited. Brad ventured out to the town liquor store shortly after we arrived in search of beer, and upon returning with a case of Bud Light, my beer-loving son sadly recounted that there was only one cooler for beer at the town's sole alcoholic beverage retailer and that his choices were substantially less than what my city boy is accustomed to. But, as I said, the townspeople were very kind and helpful, and they welcomed us with open arms. Which, in my opinion anyway, matters far more than Bud Light being the town's king of beers. 

Some of you may remember seeing images on the national news of the town of Greensburg, Kansas, after it was basically destroyed by an EF5 tornado a little more than 11 years ago. The tornado leveled 95 percent of the town, and 11 people lost their lives. The massive funnel was estimated to be 1.7 miles in width, wider than the town of Greensburg itself, with wind speeds approaching 265 miles per hour, traveling for nearly 22 miles. Miraculously, my son-in-law's parents' home was one of only a handful that sustained no damage whatsoever, and both Barrett's mom and dad survived the storm without injury ... really and truly a miracle on both counts.

I've never seen or experienced tornado damage up close and personal, but my son Brad has. He traveled as part of a film crew to Joplin, Missouri, just a couple of weeks after an EF5 multiple-vortex tornado struck the city in 2011. I well remember the multiple phone calls I received from Brad during the time he spent in Joplin ... some in which he cried as he tried to recount to me what he was seeing. My young son had never seen or experienced such tremendous loss or devastation as the people of Joplin, and the magnitude of it all was at times completely overwhelming to him. I also well remember the moment I received the photo below from Brad ... I sat at my desk and wept as I realized the danger my boy was in. His note that accompanied the photo said, "We had to tie our shirts around our faces because they ran out of masks, Mom. They said it wasn't safe to breathe the air in directly." The closer we got to Greensburg last weekend, the more I thought of how Brad would most certainly see the town through an entirely different set of eyes than I would.

As we neared the town of Greensburg last weekend, I couldn't help but notice the change in the terrain ... there were fewer trees and the ones that were there were much smaller than the ones we had seen 20 miles or so out of town. People often talk about how flat Kansas is, but there's a vast difference between land being flat and land being barren. Even though the people of Greensburg have rebuilt the town as the first "green" town in the nation, you don't have to look far to see reminders of the storm that tried its best to wipe the little town off the map more than a decade ago. Trees without limbs or bark still stand as guardians over the small town, beacons as to what the people of the town survived on the stormy night of May 4, 2007.

The barren and broken trees aren't the only reminders you'll find in Greensburg of the EF5 tornado that tore through the town. I quickly discovered that many of the residents who chose to remain in the small Kansas town following the massive storm (more than half of the population moved away) mark the passage of time as before and after the night the tornado touched down. Several times while I was there, I heard people say, "That was before the tornado," or "That was after the tornado," and those words have been pulsing in my mind all week. And generally when I get something stuck in my brain like that, it means there's something I'm supposed to learn from it. Or there's something someone else is supposed to learn. Or I'm just crazy and no one, including myself, is supposed to learn anything. Nah ... that last one can't be it ... there's a big lesson in those words for me, and maybe for you as well.

In thinking about those words from the people of Greensburg, I've been thinking about the tornadoes of life by which many of us measure our lives in terms of befores and afters. Tornadoes like getting divorced or getting fired from our job or being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness or experiencing the death of a loved one or being betrayed by someone we trusted or losing a furry friend or a plethora of other storms that come along. Storms that often threaten to destroy us ... to devastate our faith in ourselves, our faith in others, and even our faith in God.

It's so hard at times not to define ourselves by the befores and afters in life, at least it is for me anyway. And I think that maybe sometimes that's not such a bad thing, you know? Maybe recognizing the befores and afters in ourselves can serve to make us better people in the long run. Maybe it can cause us to seek shelter when we need to ... maybe it can encourage us to ask for help when we need it ... maybe it can spur us into action when we see others in danger. Maybe, just maybe, it can help us help each other ... care more about each other ... be kinder to each other. Maybe, just maybe, the befores and afters can make us better people if we let them. Maybe they can indeed, my friends ... maybe they can indeed.