A TIME TO REBUILD

This is a non-fiction story based on a news clip I read. One of the twisters in Tennessee on April 2nd flattened a house on two grandparents and their their infant grandson who they were baby-sitting. All of them died. That was the only information I had on their story when I wrote this piece. The rest of this story is fiction.

Yesterday, thousands of homes in the Midwestern states were demolished by a series of 60 tornadoes. At least thirty people are dead.

I feel shell-shocked and overcome with emotion, as I drive up to the wreckage that used to be my parents’ cherished home. There is nothing left now but a pile of rubble to give witness that there ever was a residence here. A home with some many memories…

Just yesterday there was a red-brick house in this lot. It was the home I grew up in, and Mom and Pop’s hearth for 40 years.

Last week Mom was planting marigolds seeds in the flower boxes… I get out of the car and walk to the ruble. As far as the eye can see, there is devastation.

Was it just yesterday that my wife Julie and I left our six-month-old baby Alexia with our parents for the evening, in order to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary? Yesterday, three of my loved ones were taken from me in one giant touchdown of a twister. My wife lies in the hospital with minor injuries sustained in a foolish attempt to beat the odds and get home to our daughter and my parents in the midst of the storm. The burning and aching in my heart seems unbearable. I will never see any of them again...

What will the long-term emotional damage be to both of us? How will we fill the emptiness left behind by the loss of our daughter and my dear parents?
I have not even gone to look at our own home yet. I know it may also be destroyed. How will Julie and I ever rebuild what we have lost?

Something blows past me from underneath the rubble. I stoop down to pick it up. It is a page from a Bible. Pop’s old Bible. Just touching the pages takes me back to all the times that he taught me lessons from that book when I was a just a boy. He always shared truths from the Bible with me when we would go go fishing in his conoe on the river.

My eyes are clouding over as I look at the page. I can barely read the passages. I take a handkerchief and wipe my eyes. The passage is from Ecclesiastes Chapter 3:1-4

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die.
A time to plant, and a time to uproot.
A time to kill, and a time to heal.
A time to tear down, and a time to rebuild.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh.

I am heaving huge sobs now, but I feel the presence of the Lord with me. I am reminded that my wife and I have each other and the Lord to comfort and strengthen each other. We are not alone and we have a very big God to take care of us. Grandpa’s dedication to His God made sure that I had a reminder of His presence, right now, when I needed it the most.

I walk back to the car with the page from the Bible and go to the hospital to be with my wife.