A Teacher Prays

Today my mind is reeling from the events of yesterday in Moore, OK. As a teacher, my heart shudders at the thought of a tornado ripping through a building full of students. Seeing it plastered on the news over and over is giving me many reasons to pray.

It is the final week of classes here at my high school. Generally that is a cause for great rejoicing and always that is a cause for heartfelt prayer as well. I don't know as we teachers discuss our prayers for our students much. I am sure that all teachers of faith do it, however. There are several kinds of prayers that we send up to the higher power keeping watch over our students as the travel through their years in our school.

Most often, we pray for those who are struggling for various reasons... personal, academic, and socially. These prayers are the obvious ones. The less obvious are the ones that involve where a student  might go but has not yet gone... choices we know they are wrestling with, futures they have yet to decide, and sometimes decisions we know they must make but are avoiding.

But today, I am praying for the students in a place I have never been. I am praying that many more of them will be found safely tucked away in spots in their schools that perhaps sheltered them. I am praying for the parents of those who will not be found among the survivors. I am praying for the rescue and recovery workers; a more paradoxically heroic and onerous task than I can even imagine. I am praying that the families who have lost all they own will be cared for and loved and reassured that they have those around them who will help.

And I am praying that my students will be spared from ever experiencing such horrible events of nature. Even as the storm clouds build outside on what could prove to be a severe weather day here in Missouri. I do not call such events acts of God... God does not act in this way. God was in those schools helping the teachers protect the little ones who hid beneath them in the storms. God is with the rescue workers digging with hope. God is acting through all of us sending money, blood donations, and whatever we can to aid them. Those are acts of God. We are acts of His love in the world. And He tells us, "Be still and know that I am God" - so today, I will be still and pray to Him.

Winter at its fiercest! Good-bye trees! :-(

Well, dear readers, it's been a pretty wild and wooly weekend here in ole' St.Chuck. Friday evening a wicked winter storm hit us; not with snow, but with ICE! LOTS of Ice!! Then beginning at about 3am Saturday morning the sounds of trees breaking and crashing became common. First the snap, almost like a gunshot. Then as you held your breath, the thump on the rooftops of tree limbs falling. Our poor maple in the backyard lost many branches from its center. Fortunately, no damage was done to the roof or the pool. The oak and the sycamore surprised us by dropping hardly a branch.

All over town, branches came down, taking power lines and electricity with them. By 6am Saturday we had no power... and neither did over 100,000 fellow St. Charlesians! So we lit our ventless gas fireplace, dug out all our flashlights, oil lamps, and candles and hunkered down to wait for power to return. With the fireplace, we were able to keep the house in the 60's... but not all our neighbors were able to do so.

We greeted Sunday morning with the loss of our favorite Bradford Pear tree which snapped due to the load on its poor branches. The photos here are minus a full pickup truck load of logs that Gret and Leon will use for firewood once it seasons. With their help, we were able to clean up all of what you see here.

Good news arrived about 1 on Sunday afternoon when our lights came back on! Then, when their house reached the low 50's on Sunday afternoon, our best friends the Gaunts, who had no power until Monday afternoon, moved in for an 24 hr. stay. So we had fun playing with their grandkids Victor and Gwen which successfully took all our minds off the weather outside.

Presently it's late Monday afternoon and the temps are plunging into the upper teens. The wind is supposed to pick up tonight, but since much of the ice melted away late yesterday, we should be okay. Our only worry is if any previously weakened lines fall down. We are praying that doesn't happen. St. Charles County is slated to be back to full operations by Wednesday night.

We'll miss our pretty pear tree seen here just behind the pink crabapple last spring.