WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT – If you have an extremely weak stomach or can’t handle stories of death, I would suggest not reading this post – I am giving a very real and frank account of my experience in Alabama after tornadoes swept through the state.
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“You need to be prayed up if you go down that street,” the pastor told me. “There are bodies being piled up as they find them down there.”
I turned to one of the men in our group. “We can’t have these kids going with us,” I said. “Yeah, I agree,” he responded. We headed down the road not knowing what we would find, but newly aware that the full extent of the disaster had just become evidently clear.
That moment was one of the most intense moments I’ve had in my life – ever. To try and switch, in your mind, from [simply] giving a flat of water to someone in Jesus’ name to knowing that you may see a pile of bodies, victims from the storm around the next corner, is quite a drastic switch.
I don’t want to steal away, by any means, the great ministry that happened on the ground in Alabama during the week that I was there. We prayed with many families who were standing in front of their homes just standing in awe at the task ahead in picking up their scattered belongings. Through God’s grace and with the product of Convoy of Hope (who I have the honor of working for), more than 25 truckloads of immediate supplies (water, food, paper products, etc.) were given out in the Tuscaloosa/Birmingham affected areas during that week.
To God be the glory.
Still, there’s something inside of me that still, in a way, haunts me to this day. It isn’t a spooky haunting, like when you’re watching a movie and you know someone is around the corner about to jump out. It is a realization. One that demands recognition that the world is much more than what is seems.
One of the most powerful things about the gospel is the connectivity of all living human beings. Before the sacrifice of Christ and especially the ministry of Paul, for all intensive purposes, the Jews were pretty much “the stuff”. They were the ones that got all of the blessings: the sheep, the cattle, the mula, the land, the promises and the covenants. Yet, there was a God whose heart was beating for all of His creation and not just for one people group.
It’s in moments like the ones in Alabama where this becomes abundantly clear to me. Humans have this unexplainable draw to connect with each other. When a disaster happens, people talk about their friends’ mothers’ cousins’ sons’ co-workers’ experience in that disaster. Knowing people (even if it’s knowing someone that knows someone that knows someone that knows someone x 30) that have experienced a disaster automatically makes others feel a direct connection to what has taken place. People want to feel a part of anything big that happens, even to the point of someone in Illinois saying their house shook from the Japan earthquake, which is ridiculous, at best. Even so, we all feel a connection when other humans’ lives are drastically affected.
Standing in Alabama when a woman came through our distribution line (distributing food and water) begging me to be able to take extra supplies to her neighbors, my perspective took a sudden shift.
I remember receiving a text message around the same time, from someone, letting myself and a group of friends know, that people were getting together to play games that evening. I stood there looking at my phone, staring at the simplicity of what my life was just 2 days before, now faced with the reality of what it is like to literally lose everything.
She began to weep. “Please, please, I promise, I am not stealing your product. If you’ll just allow me to take a few extra things of water to my neighbors, I promise I will get it to them,” she said.
My mind became numb as she continued to speak. Fighting to get out the words through the tears, she said: “It sounded like a train. It’s like a bomb went off in my neighborhood. The morning after the tornado, when I woke up, there were people stepping over my neighbors’ dead bodies, to steal their stuff.” I struggled to be able to take in each word as she spoke. “5 of my neighbors are dead laying out in the yard,” she ended and sobbed into the shoulder of one of our volunteers.
It’s moments like these that I will never forget. Yes, life will largely go back to “normal” for me and for the people of Alabama, one day, but it will never be the same.
Getting up at 4am to drive back to Convoy of Hope headquarters from doing a flood assessment in eastern MO – headed straight into a brief and planning meeting for Alabama – loading our equipment trailer with the forklift – speeding home to pack for Alabama – leaving at 5pm – arriving in Alabama at 2am – unpacking cots, etc. so we can get to sleep – falling asleep at 4:30am – getting up at 6am – unloading everything and starting distribution…
That day made me feel like a superhero, rushing around, preparing to save the day. But after my dose of reality, hearing the stories from the mouths of the survivors, I realized the magnitude of what had happened and had to lean on the God who has never given up on me, knowing that only He can bring the people of Alabama through what they have just experienced.
