Praying

This week on the morning show, we spent a couple of days talking about the recent tornadoes in Oklahoma and all the devastation they left behind. The images on TV took me back to the days of the Greensburg tornado, when my sister and her family lost their home and town. I remembered the sick feeling that rose in my stomach with every photo of the remains of their home. The helpless feeling of being so far away and unable to reach out every day to hug and help.

So I thought I'd share with you some ideas of how to pray...based on blog posts I wrote back in 2007. You might not know anyone directly affected by the storms, but I guarantee you anyone who did experience loss that day would appreciate your prayers anyway.

* Pray for protection from further weather devastation. I remember in the early days after the tornado, there were threats of more storms, rain, and possibly even more tornadoes...and that brought a double-edged sword to those who lost homes. More storms meant they couldn't get back to their properties to search for items to save...and anything still out there in the wreckage could get ruined before they got to it. And on an emotional level, it was scary to think about living through round two when round one was so fresh.

* Pray for physical and emotional strength. Through phone calls and emails in the days after the tornado, I could tell when shock began to wear off and reality arrived. It was an adjustment for them to realize "work" no longer meant chasing kids down the hallway of a school or preparing a sermon for Sunday or studying for a test...but rather covering the same ground they covered yesterday, hoping to find something new. It's exhausting emotionally to sort through the wreckage that used to be an ordered life...and it's exhausting physically to pick through debris and carry your possessions to a new place.

* Pray for health. One thing that surprised me after the tornado...sunburns. Think about it though...it makes sense. They no longer had a roof of any kind - even a porch roof - to duck out of the sun for even a minute, and all the trees had been stripped down to trunks and larger branches. No leaves. No place to take shade unless a vehicle happened to be nearby. My niece got a nasty sunburn just trying to help clean the yard. And you know how a sunburn can wipe you out physically when it hurts so bad. Imagine that while trying to recover from a tornado...

* Pray for wisdom. Everyone is trying to simultaneously work through what just happened while making decisions for a future. Decisions about where to live...what to drive...what to wear...what's a necessity and what's a frivolity...and those sorts of big choices are scary and confusing when you're making them one at a time. Making them all at once is huge.

* Pray for extended family.  It was hard for all of us to not be there. I think at some point, everyone in our family made the trip out to help, but we could only be gone for a short period of time. It was hard to read and hear the stories from hundreds of miles away and feel so helpless. Families hurt too - and they need prayers as much as those in the throes of the devastation.

* Pray for clarity of mind. Insurance is a wonderful thing...but the process of filing claims can be downright exhausting. Especially when you have to make detailed lists of every single thing you owned...and without it sitting in front of you, you can't quite remember what you had. My sister mentioned once that people who lose things to fire sometimes still have shells of things to look to trigger memories for insurance lists. In a tornado like this one...it's GONE GONE. You have to conjure it up, and that's hard to do.

* Pray for those wearing multiple hats. My brother-in-law is a pastor, and he not only had to work through the decisions for himself and his family, but he had to make decisions for his church. Guide a congregation that had also experienced losses. Guide a church through rebuilding a structure. Pastors hurt too, you know. And doctors. And counselors. And nurses. And...fill in the blank. When entire towns are wiped out, people are expected to still serve in their roles...and they have their own hurts to work through.

I'm sure it's not a complete list...but as you pray in the days to come, perhaps it will help guide you. And speaking of the days to come...don't forget to continue praying even after these people are no longer the center of media coverage. I would venture to say - that's when they will need it most. When weariness sets in.