Being a Parent and Praying
There’s something about being a parent which makes everything different.
That may seem like an obvious statement, in fact I’m sure it does, however I am watching the news coverage of the Oklahoma tornado and seeing that it struck two schools… I just can’t hardly watch it. At least one was an elementary school. There was no time for the parents to get to them, and as the Govenor of Oklahoma just said on CBS “we pray these children are ok” however we don’t know.
I just imagine being a parent of a child there, the panic they must feel trying to get to their children…
When we had some bad weather and threats of tornados hit Macon about, oh, say a month ago- I was caught up in the weather driving from class back to my house. It was NOTHING compare to what happened today and yet I will admit I was in tears praying that I got home to my babies. When I ran inside as the rain poured down, after having driven through the wind and yellow looking sky, I immediately grabbed my kids. My dad, of course, made fun of me. Then the pseudo-journalist-weather geek in me went out in it later with my dad and drove around to survey the damage. A few power lines were out as well as trees.
As scared as I was then and as hard as I prayed, I can’t imagine how these parents feel.
I know I like to have contingency plans for disasters. Car wreck? Immediately climb in to back seat and quickly get kids out. It could be because I was in a terrible car wreck as a high schooler, in which our car caught on fire, and my family got out with just our lives that I think about this. Tornado? Hunker down in the storage space underneath the stairs or the bathtub in the downstairs bathroom.
But we can’t plan for everything. Prayers for everyone affected by this, please. I can only imagine the panic these families feel. Please pray especially for the parents and children. As a parent, I have realized even stronger where my limits are, and many times- prayer is all we have.
