Praying for West, TX and all hurt this week

I know I’m supposed to be sharing Day 5 of Using Games in School, Reading Games, but it’s not on my heart right now.

To be quite honest I spent most of my writing time yesterday searching for news on West, Texas.

 

We travel through there every time we go up to Jeff’s parents’ house.  There is a gas station/truck stop we stop in most times we head up there.  They serve awesome kolaches.

 

They’re also incredibly friendly, right now the Czech Stop has opened their doors to all first-responders and are giving them free food as they search for survivors.

 

The blood bank in Temple, TX (a few hours South of West) closed its doors and told the rather lengthy line of volunteers to come back the next day, they didn’t have the capability to handle anymore donors that day.

 

A local restaurant here is offering a free meal to any and all blood donors.  They’re going to get a great meal, because it’s delicious Tex-Mex.

 

I really wanted a picture to share of that truck stop.  It’s iconic for Texas, and that part of Texas.  It has cheerful Czech people painted on the side, because that part of Texas was founded by Czechs fleeing war, only to turn around and fight in a war for independence a few years later.  They host a Deutschfest Festival every year, with lots of beer and German food.  But, I don’t have one.  It’s just so a part of the landscape I don’t take a picture of it, next time I will because it is such a part of who I am.  Instead I found a picture of a lone bluebonnet growing in my backyard amid bare ground.  Nothing else would grow there, but it did.  Texas soil is rocky, it’s not good for farming, but we survived years of drought and tornadoes and hurricanes to become a thriving state.

America is rather like this bluebonnet, we sprang up and there was much going against us, but no matter what is thrown at us we survive.  Some lunatic may bomb us, there may be an explosion, but our heart endures.  We will not be bowed down, and we will not change who we are.

So in all of this horror of the past week, there is hope.  That’s what I’m choosing to dwell on, not the bombing of Monday, or the explosion of Wednesday.  So, I am not hunting down articles on why or who did this because right now it’s all speculation that is only harming the hunt.  Instead I am looking for the stories of hope, I read posts like this and I cry, not because they are sad, but because my heart is too full to respond to it all.  The volunteer Rangers who are heading to West to search for survivors.  The plans to block a so-called Christian group (I won’t promote their cause by naming them, but you know who they are) from protesting the funerals of the lost.  We have stopped them before and we will do it again.

 

So today, I’m going to spend cuddling my kids.  I may or may not get today’s planned post up tomorrow, but to be quite honest, I’m not going to worry about it.  I just need a good day to cry.  To cry for lost hopes, to cry for wives with no husband.  To cry for houses knocked down by the explosion, teddy bears lost.  To cry for a mother mourning her son died in a senseless bombing and explaining it to her daughter who lost her leg.  I cry for the politicians and the newscasters eager to blame someone, anyone and not wait for the facts.  I cry because it is too much for me today.  I can not handle it, and I am overwhelmed.

 

But in the midst of my crying I remember the hope of who I am, and who I trust in.  There is hope.  I receive messages I am loved from friends who don’t know that I’m struggling.  My kids run up and give me a hug because they love me.  God’s grace is sufficient and I need to remember to trust in HIM.

 

And I will end there before I babble on more, I’m feeling a combination of introspective and rather champion, and quite a bit of the feeling of the Texas patriots of the revolution, “Come and Take It.”  I dare you to take my spirit, you’ll have quite the fight on your hands.