Driving Through Disaster

Not sure if anyone is aware of this but within one week span of time Mobile AL was hit with two tornadoes.  One a week before Christmas and a worse one on Christmas day.  If you follow the links on the bottom of the page they will show you the damage.

The reason I am writing about this now is because I drive right by some of the worst damage everyday on my way to work.  Most people during their commute just shuffle and bustle and are thinking about everything.  Everyday I do the normal thinking of other random things until I hit these effected areas and am instantly put in a place of gratitude that it did not kill anyone and that all that was lost can be repaired.  But it also makes me grateful for my house and that nothing happened to it.  It is honestly very difficult to drive through such an area and not take a second to be grateful. 

Driving through these areas also reminds me of my Appalachia trip last year to Bonanza Kentucky.  We did tornado relief there and that was the first time I had been in an area that had such devastation.  It hits you in a different way when you see people's things in trees and parts of cars or furniture. 
 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGJNTKhG9w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m76tKgWXblY





this is one of my favorite houses in Mobile and it was destroyed.


Murphy High School no longer exists.




Please pray for the people affected by the tornado.

Home

I have basically been asked the same question for the past month now.  Are you excited to be/go home? I have been hesitant to post this blog and all of my thoughts on it. 

Was I excited to leave Mobile to go Holm for two weeks? Of course.  Do not get me wrong, I have very much enjoyed being home and seeing family, friends, Saint Joseph's and Philadelphia.  But there lies the problem.  Before I left for Mobile I had a home I grew from being a child, which is my permanent address, but I also had a home where I grew into an adult, which is SJU.

 I was at Saint Joseph's for a basketball game a week ago.   I was walking around with one of my closest friends, Gretchen, who is doing JVC in Detroit.  As we were walking around this place that we both called home for four years and where we met, we both quickly got in a funk.

I do not know if I truly have a home at the moment.  My mother and family would say it's where they live.  My SJU family would say I always have a home there.  But currently my address is in Mobile, AL.  I feel like I do not have a place.  It's hard to expect to have the feeling of being home, but the places you called home no longer make you feel at home . 

My roots are yet to be planted and, in a way, they also have been uprooted.  So as of right now I am in the air.  No one ever said flying was a bad thing.  I always choose a bird if I could be any animal because I have always wanted to fly.  This post was going to be somewhat negative until I started writing it and now have reached it to see that it is all a good thing.

A photo an old friend took for me says this quote in it, I happened to come across this photo just as I decided to publish this.

"Home is not where you live but where they understand you."

I truly believe this statement is true.  So, though I may not have a physical home, a place to truly call my own with established roots, trunk and branches, I have many homes in the people that constantly support me.