"we were happy in Alabama..."

As I sit here and look at images of the utter devastation from the deadly tornadoes in Alabama I am reminded of riding my bicycle in that very area last summer on The 5 Weeks for Freedom bike tour. Birmingham was a destination we all eagerly anticipated at the end of our first week of riding up through Alabama from Mobile. We rode through some of the smallest towns and met and were received by some of the nicest and most genuine people many of us had ever met. Many of our team had never had the enjoyable experience of being on the receiving end of southern hospitality. We were welcomed into peoples churches, homes and hearts. It was a perceptible feeling that is infused into the people of these small towns and easily shared with us as we rode north. Jackson...Linden...Moundville...Vestavia Hills...Pleasant Grove...Birmingham...and all the other small towns between. We became part of your stories and you became part of ours. I remember well...every road...every smell...the light rain coming into Jackson. I remember trying to introduce my teammates to boiled peanuts at one of our many rest stops at gas stations. I remember the prayers prayed over us both for our safety and for the cause of human trafficking which we were riding for. I remember the beautiful soft southern accents as people engaged us in conversation and time after time asked us “you ridin' to where?...New York...sure nuff?”. I remember the incredible hospitality of the people of Moundville and how they came together across denominational lines to hear our message and give generously to our cause. It was a powerful witness to many of our team to see so many people they have never met receive them so lovingly and complete. But..that's the south...and the people of Alabama that I am well familiar with. I have had a long history with Alabama and I lived there as a child while my father was in the Army. Many years later I lived in Montgomery when I worked there as a nurse and in fact, my son was born there. I quite jokingly told my wife I wanted to name him Jefferson Davis. Seriously...just kidding. The thing that the bike team really got to enjoy and was very important to continued riding was...southern cooking. Every church in every town went above and beyond in feeding the team. When you ride bikes all day under the hot Alabama sun you can put away some food at the end of the day. I am pretty sure that some of the team from the north got totally addicted to southern sweet tea. People in the south LOVE to cook and they love to feed people and I can assure you we were fed. I often joked that we were going to have the only bike ride to ever gain weight. I must say that the First Baptist Church at Pleasant Grove was totally over the top on food. As it was the fourth of July weekend they had an old fashioned picnic with so much food it was unbelievable. The icing on the cake there was that several men from the church stayed up all night cooking pork on an outdoor smoker for the food of heaven...pulled pork barbeque. Where we were staying at the church we had to smell that pork cooking all night long. It was amazing. Even with all these memories flooding over me making me smile...I am so sad for my friends and those I don't even know who has suffered loss from this extreme weather. I look at the pictures on the news and it just looks surreal and I am sure that the people there feel the same way. The one thing I do know is that these people are resilient and will recover. It's in their blood...their DNA. They are survivors and have come from a long line of survivors. Many of their grand and great grandparents lived through the civil war. Many of these people had relatives that suffered under the cruel system of slavery...escaping against tremendous odds on the Underground Railroad. This is the exact reason we were riding our bikes on a route approximating that same escape route to the north and freedom. So, seeing this devastation in places we rode through and where people reached out to us in a powerful way...hurts. I don't know why...I can only pray. That's all I can do...just pray. There are no answers so why bother trying to figure it out. As I said in my previous blog, this is the sole realm of a all knowing God. I would never even pretend to speak to this one. It is overwhelming and horrific and tragic and our normal thing is to ask...this is what we do...we ask. I ask too...but not why. I just ask that God will give peace and help those affected to stand firm in their faith and not be moved. Anything else is none of my business...right?