Sally Smith Says, "You Can't Fall Apart Over Things Like This."

Last night I watch a woman, Sally Smith, standing in the rubble of her mother's home in Joplin.  She turns to Anderson Cooper and says, "You can't fall apart over things like this."

I burst into tears.  Can you imagine your whole life crumbling around you and saying that?  What does she know that I don't?  Sally Smith is firm in her resolve, smiling.  She picks up the pieces of dolls, trying to identify fragments.  Anderson asks her where you even start to build your life again after a tornado like this.

"I don't know what I'm going to do, but it will work out.  It will."

Anderson notices her t-shirt, and she says, "Life is good.  God does not give us anything we can't handle.  I know His hand is in it; I've seen too many things.  We'll be fine.  Saying good-bye to things is hard. . .

Anderson says, "You're about the most optimistic person I've met in a long time."

That's when she says, "You cannot fall apart over things like this."

Sally Smith has the faith, strength, and courage of a woman who lives with flair.  I just love her.  Will I ever be the kind of woman who can look in the face of disaster and proclaim the kind of truth that she can? 


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Journal:  When I'm complaining about any disappointment today, I'm going to remember Sally Smith in the rubble.  Where can you say, "You cannot fall apart over things like this"?

Love is a Tornado

This morning, my daughter hands me a little card that says her love for me is like a tornado.  She drew a picture of a tornado and wrote, "It's like this." 

I turn to her and say, "You mean it's powerful and destructive?"

She smiles and pretends she's punching me.  She tries to explain the comparison:  "It gets stronger each day like a tornado gets stronger with each spin." 

Her tornado is a giant mess of scribble that looks terrifying.  

Love is a tornado? 

That can't be right.   

My husband adds at breakfast that a tornado is like love because you "never know where it's coming from." It can take you by surprise (like how I met him when I least expected it).  

I look at this little family.  I think of the kind of love that breaks the heart and repairs it simultaneously.  I think of the terrifying surrender of it, the giant mess of living lives intertwined. I think of the powerful destruction that love's wake leaves on the landscape of a heart.  It's a tornado that rips you apart.

But it's the kind of devastation you endure because there's no other way to have it.  It's the most beautiful storm you'll ever experience. 

I hug my children--these little tornadoes in my heart--and think about the kind of love I want in my life.  Let it be giant and powerful.  Let it get stronger each day. 

Let it destroy what in me needs to be leveled and remake a pure landscape.  


(Photo:  Public Domain. Credit: OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) via [pingnews])