When we mapped out our path a few months ago, we had already included Oklahoma on our itinerary. When just a few weeks after, tornadoes ripped through cities and counties and towns, all within weeks of each other, we knew why we were going. We had people donating to us specifically for Oklahoma and its devastated families.
On Sunday night, we met up with an old friend of Carol's who told us that while Moore, OK, was in need, there was a tiny town about an hour outside of Moore which had been hit a few weeks prior to the tornado that has garnered media attention and public heartbreak. A mere speck on the map, a backwoods, tight knit community, called Little Axe.
Little Axe is dirt roads. Old tar shanties, trailers and goats and horses. A poverty stricken group of families, decimated just five short weeks ago by a tornado that ripped through their town, leaving rubble and wrecked homes, wrecked people in its wake. "Go to Little Axe", Carol's friend urged. "They're hurting bad."
And so to Little Axe we went. And in Little Axe we were changed.
We started out at First Baptist Church of Little Axe, a small church that has been converted into a warehouse of supplies for the victims. Piles and piles of diapers, and food, and blankets. Manned by a small, hardworking group of volunteers. We met Joy, and Chris, and Laura, and Mary (side note: I've never met a Mary my age. They're all 60 and over. What does that say to you?). And Greg. Greg stands out to me more than anyone we met in Oklahoma.
The first thing I thought when I saw Greg was, "I've found where David Crowder's been hiding! And he's disguised as an old man in Little Axe, Oklahoma!"
Greg really does look eerily similar to David. A transplant from California, he volunteered to take over the phones for his pastor after the tornado came through. In the past five weeks he's become an organizer and administrator of sorts, the hub of a wheel that spokes outward into the community. We were told he would know which families we could help, and he did. As he was standing there, surrounded by piles of canned goods and boxes, telling us about this family or that family who had been hit, this pillar of the community, that volunteer who has been such a big help, another volunteer, Chris, spoke up and said, "You wouldn't know from the way Greg's talking, but his house got hit pretty hard too."
Greg waved his words away like he would a bothersome fly. "I'm nobody", he insisted. To which Missy immediately replied, "You're not nobody. You're somebody." How many people are out there, giving everything they've got, consistently and effectively changing lives, not drawing so much as an ounce of the limelight to themselves? I'll be the first to say I'm not one of them. If I lay my life down, you better be sure I want someone to thank me for it.
But not Greg. Not only did he not want thanks, he barely seemed to want acknowledgment.
Greg guided us through the town, which hardly seemed a town to us, suburban girls that we are. A bunch of homes and properties scrambled together haphazardly, no rhyme or reason. Add to that the destruction caused by the tornado, and it resembled a war zone. I stared open mouthed out the window, taking in the churned up red clay of Oklahoma, the piles of debris that towered over my head. Trees, toys, clothes, shoes. Ceiling fans. Pots and pans. Sinks. Baking and rotting in the hot sun. We stopped at a high point on a deserted road, where Greg got out of his beat up truck and we followed, so we could have a clearer view of the tornado's path. And there it was. Stretched out in front of us, as far as our eyes could see, a trail of destruction that my brain couldn't even register. I'm standing there staring at it. But I don't understand it. What's happened here? How is this possible? Miles of it.
The pictures don't capture it. They are tame, flat, lifeless, unable to show the contrast of the big blue sky, the singing birds and warm breezes, clashing against the red clay, the sea of debris, the mangled and twisted trees, the paleness of their insides showing sharp and stark against the bark that remains, spiky,splintered fingers pointing at the sky in accusation. Life and death presenting against each other, who is stronger? Although it seems like death, don't forget. It's life. Life is always stronger.
As we stood there, Greg told us a little more of his story, stories of his past, as well as his own tornado experience. How he and his wife Regina thought they had gotten locked out of their storm shelter. So they hollered to their neighbor girl, standing helplessly on her porch, to come with them to find a place to hunker down. "I have my cat!" she yelled. "Bring the cat then!" Greg shouted back. She came, bringing her "big, fat, orange Garfield type cat", as Greg described it, and they all four crawled under a truck in a carport and hid under it with a quilt or a tarp pulled over them, Greg, his wife, their girl neighbor and her fat cat. A tree got ripped apart and landed mere feet above their heads.
He told us this story casually, like he was telling us what he had for dinner last night. Hamburgers with a side of life altering tornado.
But that's the way Greg is. He makes himself small. We knew there was more than what he was telling us, but when we asked if we could help him with anything, he put us off, saying there were others worse off than he was.
We know that, we said. We want to help YOU, we said.
Greg did allow us to pray for him, right there in that deserted road, surrounded by destruction every way we turned. And again I had one of those experiences. An is-this-really-happening experience. Am I really standing here in the middle of Oklahoma, the sun burning my skin, surrounded by miles of tornado damage, praying for a man who looks like an old David Crowder?
We thanked God for Greg, for him guiding us through his town, for the help he is to his community, and for giving us the opportunity to meet him. We asked God to lay on his heart something, anything, we could do to help his family, and to give him the courage to tell us. He still said he couldn't think of anything, so we devised a plan to help him on the sly.
We left Greg for the time being to meet Lisa, a woman he put us in contact with, who is a single mom with three teenage sons, running a salon and being forced out of her home, and who has spent everyday for the past five weeks in the parking lot of the Shell station manning a tent with items for tornado victims. She cried in our arms, weary and hurting, and told us over and over, "Little Axe is home. I'm not leaving here, ever. This is it." She showed us her sons and her salon with obvious pride. She told us she kept her prices low because everyone should be able to afford to feel beautiful. She has a sign on her wall, "Do the kindest things in the kindest way." Our mission exactly. We were able to help Lisa out with a bill, and prayed with her, while she in turn prayed for us.
Lisa put us in contact with Bobbie, who put us in contact with Margaret, a mother and grandmother whose house had been leveled. We drove over rutted muddy roads, passing more and more damage and destruction, until we got to Margaret's place. She and her family
are living in popup trailers on their property, in a type of compound. Margaret and her husband, her sons and their wives, six grandkids, a couple dogs.
Some of her sons live within sight of her, and were severely hit as well. One son's house was completely gone. All that was left was the back deck. We looked across the road and saw it, standing alone, ending in midair. There was no indication that a house had ever even been there. Margaret's three year old granddaughter had a pet horse that they thought had been lost in the storm- the barn had been crushed under the house. They found him a town over, lying on the ground. Thinking the worst, they called to him and he hopped up, with only a scratch on his leg. The little girl told her daddy and grandma, "I ain't got no clothes. I ain't got no house. But I got my horsy." Go ahead. Cry. I am.
We told Margaret we would be back in a few hours, and headed into town to buy groceries for them. They were one of the few families we encountered with a way to store and keep groceries.
On our way back out to Margaret's, we stopped at the church again to say goodbye to Greg, and give him a card with our "thank you" tucked inside. And told him strictly that whatever was in that envelope was for him and his family. He told us over and over how blessed he was to meet us, but the blessing was ours.
We got back to Margaret's, trunk loaded with bags, groceries on our laps, and began unloading them onto their picnic table. Kids came swarming from all over, helping to carry bags, peeking in them and calling out to one another, "Look! Marshmallows! Popsicles! Look! Look!" One of our donors asked that we use their donation to buy ice cream and all the fixings for a family with children. They jumped with excitement over the rainbow cones, the chocolate sprinkles and syrup.
We had also made a point to get coloring books, crayons, and bubbles for the kids. I wanted that more than anything for them. A little piece of normalcy. A little bit of possession. It wasn't much. But you would have thought we handed them the moon. The boys dug through them and found the Strawberry Shortcake one, calling their sister over and presenting it to her like a prize, "You can have this!" She asked over and over, "I can have this? I can have this?" If my heart hadn't broken already, it did then.
Just babies. Little kids, the same age as mine, younger, who lost everything. Everything. My God. I can't even wrap my head around it. I can't fathom it.
We left Margaret's "compound", the last sounds reaching my ears the voices of those kids rejoicing in their riches. And my heart rejoicing in mine.
The people we met are so strong. Strong, good people, putting others needs before their own, no matter how dire. People like Greg, Lisa, Margaret and their neighbors, who are working together one house at a time to get their town back up on its feet. Am I strong? Little Axe made me question that. Could I do it, if I had to? I don't know.
But I do know that, as I talked to my kids from my hotel room that night, knowing they were safe at home with their daddy, bathed, clothed, fed, not a worry in their minds about where they would sleep, what they would eat, would they be okay, that I wasn't going to be the same. Ever. I'm sure there are piles of laundry awaiting me back home. Dishes and squabbling and refereeing. But it's there. Waiting. Little Axe, Moore, West, they can't all say that.
And my memories of these places are stronger than my selfishness. Selfishness doesn't stand a chance against gratitude.
We started out at First Baptist Church of Little Axe, a small church that has been converted into a warehouse of supplies for the victims. Piles and piles of diapers, and food, and blankets. Manned by a small, hardworking group of volunteers. We met Joy, and Chris, and Laura, and Mary (side note: I've never met a Mary my age. They're all 60 and over. What does that say to you?). And Greg. Greg stands out to me more than anyone we met in Oklahoma.
The first thing I thought when I saw Greg was, "I've found where David Crowder's been hiding! And he's disguised as an old man in Little Axe, Oklahoma!"
Greg really does look eerily similar to David. A transplant from California, he volunteered to take over the phones for his pastor after the tornado came through. In the past five weeks he's become an organizer and administrator of sorts, the hub of a wheel that spokes outward into the community. We were told he would know which families we could help, and he did. As he was standing there, surrounded by piles of canned goods and boxes, telling us about this family or that family who had been hit, this pillar of the community, that volunteer who has been such a big help, another volunteer, Chris, spoke up and said, "You wouldn't know from the way Greg's talking, but his house got hit pretty hard too."
Greg waved his words away like he would a bothersome fly. "I'm nobody", he insisted. To which Missy immediately replied, "You're not nobody. You're somebody." How many people are out there, giving everything they've got, consistently and effectively changing lives, not drawing so much as an ounce of the limelight to themselves? I'll be the first to say I'm not one of them. If I lay my life down, you better be sure I want someone to thank me for it.
But not Greg. Not only did he not want thanks, he barely seemed to want acknowledgment.
Greg guided us through the town, which hardly seemed a town to us, suburban girls that we are. A bunch of homes and properties scrambled together haphazardly, no rhyme or reason. Add to that the destruction caused by the tornado, and it resembled a war zone. I stared open mouthed out the window, taking in the churned up red clay of Oklahoma, the piles of debris that towered over my head. Trees, toys, clothes, shoes. Ceiling fans. Pots and pans. Sinks. Baking and rotting in the hot sun. We stopped at a high point on a deserted road, where Greg got out of his beat up truck and we followed, so we could have a clearer view of the tornado's path. And there it was. Stretched out in front of us, as far as our eyes could see, a trail of destruction that my brain couldn't even register. I'm standing there staring at it. But I don't understand it. What's happened here? How is this possible? Miles of it.
The pictures don't capture it. They are tame, flat, lifeless, unable to show the contrast of the big blue sky, the singing birds and warm breezes, clashing against the red clay, the sea of debris, the mangled and twisted trees, the paleness of their insides showing sharp and stark against the bark that remains, spiky,splintered fingers pointing at the sky in accusation. Life and death presenting against each other, who is stronger? Although it seems like death, don't forget. It's life. Life is always stronger.
As we stood there, Greg told us a little more of his story, stories of his past, as well as his own tornado experience. How he and his wife Regina thought they had gotten locked out of their storm shelter. So they hollered to their neighbor girl, standing helplessly on her porch, to come with them to find a place to hunker down. "I have my cat!" she yelled. "Bring the cat then!" Greg shouted back. She came, bringing her "big, fat, orange Garfield type cat", as Greg described it, and they all four crawled under a truck in a carport and hid under it with a quilt or a tarp pulled over them, Greg, his wife, their girl neighbor and her fat cat. A tree got ripped apart and landed mere feet above their heads.
He told us this story casually, like he was telling us what he had for dinner last night. Hamburgers with a side of life altering tornado.
But that's the way Greg is. He makes himself small. We knew there was more than what he was telling us, but when we asked if we could help him with anything, he put us off, saying there were others worse off than he was.
We know that, we said. We want to help YOU, we said.
Greg did allow us to pray for him, right there in that deserted road, surrounded by destruction every way we turned. And again I had one of those experiences. An is-this-really-happening experience. Am I really standing here in the middle of Oklahoma, the sun burning my skin, surrounded by miles of tornado damage, praying for a man who looks like an old David Crowder?
We thanked God for Greg, for him guiding us through his town, for the help he is to his community, and for giving us the opportunity to meet him. We asked God to lay on his heart something, anything, we could do to help his family, and to give him the courage to tell us. He still said he couldn't think of anything, so we devised a plan to help him on the sly.
We left Greg for the time being to meet Lisa, a woman he put us in contact with, who is a single mom with three teenage sons, running a salon and being forced out of her home, and who has spent everyday for the past five weeks in the parking lot of the Shell station manning a tent with items for tornado victims. She cried in our arms, weary and hurting, and told us over and over, "Little Axe is home. I'm not leaving here, ever. This is it." She showed us her sons and her salon with obvious pride. She told us she kept her prices low because everyone should be able to afford to feel beautiful. She has a sign on her wall, "Do the kindest things in the kindest way." Our mission exactly. We were able to help Lisa out with a bill, and prayed with her, while she in turn prayed for us.
Lisa put us in contact with Bobbie, who put us in contact with Margaret, a mother and grandmother whose house had been leveled. We drove over rutted muddy roads, passing more and more damage and destruction, until we got to Margaret's place. She and her family
are living in popup trailers on their property, in a type of compound. Margaret and her husband, her sons and their wives, six grandkids, a couple dogs.
Some of her sons live within sight of her, and were severely hit as well. One son's house was completely gone. All that was left was the back deck. We looked across the road and saw it, standing alone, ending in midair. There was no indication that a house had ever even been there. Margaret's three year old granddaughter had a pet horse that they thought had been lost in the storm- the barn had been crushed under the house. They found him a town over, lying on the ground. Thinking the worst, they called to him and he hopped up, with only a scratch on his leg. The little girl told her daddy and grandma, "I ain't got no clothes. I ain't got no house. But I got my horsy." Go ahead. Cry. I am.
We told Margaret we would be back in a few hours, and headed into town to buy groceries for them. They were one of the few families we encountered with a way to store and keep groceries.
On our way back out to Margaret's, we stopped at the church again to say goodbye to Greg, and give him a card with our "thank you" tucked inside. And told him strictly that whatever was in that envelope was for him and his family. He told us over and over how blessed he was to meet us, but the blessing was ours.
We got back to Margaret's, trunk loaded with bags, groceries on our laps, and began unloading them onto their picnic table. Kids came swarming from all over, helping to carry bags, peeking in them and calling out to one another, "Look! Marshmallows! Popsicles! Look! Look!" One of our donors asked that we use their donation to buy ice cream and all the fixings for a family with children. They jumped with excitement over the rainbow cones, the chocolate sprinkles and syrup.
We had also made a point to get coloring books, crayons, and bubbles for the kids. I wanted that more than anything for them. A little piece of normalcy. A little bit of possession. It wasn't much. But you would have thought we handed them the moon. The boys dug through them and found the Strawberry Shortcake one, calling their sister over and presenting it to her like a prize, "You can have this!" She asked over and over, "I can have this? I can have this?" If my heart hadn't broken already, it did then.
Just babies. Little kids, the same age as mine, younger, who lost everything. Everything. My God. I can't even wrap my head around it. I can't fathom it.
We left Margaret's "compound", the last sounds reaching my ears the voices of those kids rejoicing in their riches. And my heart rejoicing in mine.
The people we met are so strong. Strong, good people, putting others needs before their own, no matter how dire. People like Greg, Lisa, Margaret and their neighbors, who are working together one house at a time to get their town back up on its feet. Am I strong? Little Axe made me question that. Could I do it, if I had to? I don't know.
But I do know that, as I talked to my kids from my hotel room that night, knowing they were safe at home with their daddy, bathed, clothed, fed, not a worry in their minds about where they would sleep, what they would eat, would they be okay, that I wasn't going to be the same. Ever. I'm sure there are piles of laundry awaiting me back home. Dishes and squabbling and refereeing. But it's there. Waiting. Little Axe, Moore, West, they can't all say that.
And my memories of these places are stronger than my selfishness. Selfishness doesn't stand a chance against gratitude.
-M
{{Day 11 Photo Dump}}
{{Day 11 Photo Dump}}
No comments:
Post a Comment