We All Have Stories.

I distinctly remember pacing the dimly lit room in disbelief,
exiting the patio door to the shrill sound of sirens
while blue and red illuminated the depressed night skies.
Rain continued to thump the wooden deck above me
as I tried to make sense of Sunday's events.

Sunday seemed to be set up as just another day.
Church, lunch, church, dinner.
Repeat weekly for eternity.

But Mother Nature had something else in mind.

The storm invaded Joplin, MO
as if it were a land to be conquered.
Sonja and I flanked the storm,
Heading to Afton for our routine Sunday Night Hangout
With the students that we have come to love.
Leaving to the sound of tornado sirens,
We peered to the west of Interstate 44
And saw a lowering cloud that characterized our drive with silence.
Shaken faces greeted us in the room where we had laughed so often.
As we learned the news of the Tornado,
The education that i had just celebrated completing seemed worthless.
We watched solemnly via web cam as a storm chaser toured the remains of the city.
They never teach you how to deal with such a sight.
Enduring the repeating pulse, each number dialed proved a friend was safe.
We decided to return to Joplin via Kansas and back-roads.
Entering the city from the west, we found a line cut through the heart of Joplin.

Story after story, work, and volunteerism filled the week.
Was this the real world about which Adults had warned?
As little help the Tornado sirens were to Joplin,
So too were the warnings repeated about the cruelty and unfairness of the "real" world.
No matter how imaginative, thoughtful, or daring my thoughts were about life after graduation,
This exceeded my expectations.
This was a scene out of a movie, not reality.
The kind of thing you don't mind watching because you know it's fiction.
And each morning, as i awoke,
I wondered if the devastation had disappeared.
I wondered if the nightmare had finally concluded

But what i found was life.
Disaster is our plight.
Each day, we face devastation and death,
and the daunting task of living among it.

But more important than the reality that is ours,
Is the fact that the warnings from adults about
unfairness, cruelty, and unjustness,
Those warnings fall short.
Not because they fail to depict cruelty in a way that us understudies can understand.
But because they stop at cruelty.
What they fail to warn against is the way people confront cruelty.
The way in which communities love.
The way in which restoration conquers.

And so as I stood on my porch today,
On a routine Sunday while the stars lit up the night sky,
I learned that we all have stories.
But more importantly, I learned that those stories persist.