The Miracle Monday That Wasn’t

I live in Oklahoma City. Way down in the southeast corner of it. I can stand on my roof and see Moore. Which means, if I had stood on my roof all night, I would have watched the constant flicker of spotlights and heard the thrum of helicopters as relief workers, police, and firefighters slowly transitioned from search and rescue to recovery.

Yesterday was Miracle Monday.

 

 

Miracle Monday is a little joke among Superman fans. It's a holiday of the future celebrated on the third Monday of May by people who commemorate the time Superman defeated Satan.

I love it when I get to write sentences like that.

I also love the idea of Miracle Monday. Especially the part where, for generations, nobody remembered exactly why they were celebrating. They just knew they had an overall feeling of good will and well being on that day. It took a time travelling journalism student to even figure out what event could be so good, so noble, so life affirming that all of humanity celebrates it on an instinctive level.

Naturally, I told people "Happy Miracle Monday!" both in person and via social media. Some of them even wished it back to me, although you could see them trying to figure out if they should know what I was talking about.

But that was all before three in the afternoon. It was around then that I piled myself, my six year old son, and two dogs into the storm shelter in my garage to wait and see if we'd still have a house a couple hours later.

Once we were underground, it wasn't very exciting. I spent most of the time listening to hail the size of tennis balls hitting the garage door, fielding texts and phone calls from concerned family and friends, and wondering about my wife's safety. Elijah and I split the rest of the time between keeping our minds off the storm with Candy Crush and watching the angry blob of red and purple drift across radar in spits and sputters caused by a thin bar of WiFi signal.

When we finally got the all clear, I wrestled the boy and the dogs back out of the shelter and turned on the news. I began to see the aftermath of a tornado that spanned an entire mile and rode nearly the exact same path of destruction that one of its brethren had on May 3, 1999.

I discovered that it hit an elementary school less than ten miles from my house. The source of my drinking water is a lake less than five miles away, and the same tornado knocked out the water purification plant there. Some large pieces of the playground equipment from a park my son and I often played at had landed on a friend's porch. A farm we visited on a school field trip simply isn't there anymore.

The most destructive storm in recorded history. Ruined homes. Debris thrown into other states. Collapsed schools. Students trapped under collapsed schools. Dead children.

All that tumbled into my mind alongside Miracle Monday and I had the most honest, most ridiculous, most childish thought of my adult life.

I wished for Superman to save us. I longed for a streak of bright blue and red with lungs powerful enough to blow this monster storm the other direction. In my mind's eye, I vividly saw children trapped in darkness, afraid and alone, suddenly bathed in light, blinking against it to see a mighty S stretched across a broad chest.

But my wish didn't come true. Not in the way I wanted it to in that moment. Instead, I had constant television coverage of neighborhoods and businesses I knew reduced to rubble. Lists of children waiting for their parents to drive down highways choked with traffic and detritus and rescue them. The tally of the dead climbing.

I turned it off eventually, overwhelmed and overloaded with the sheer awfulness of it. I hugged my son and tried to explain why his mother and I were so upset, how there were far too many parents that weren't going to be able to hug their kids tonight or ever again.

Since then, the relief efforts have been stunning. Children reunited with parents. Okies donating massive amounts of food, water, blankets, clothes, and other necessities to relief efforts. People working all night to do what they could before any other weather struck. I'm sure eventually some amazing and triumphant stories will come out of all this.

But right now...right now, it's just a Miracle Monday without any miracles. I'm left in a dark place where it's hard to see the light. My heart aches for all my neighbors with no place to lay their heads and the grieving parents with holes in their lives.

Though we dodged tragedy yesterday, my family has honestly been living through the most tumultuous year and a half of our lives. With no exaggeration, the last eighteen months have been physically dangerous, emotionally harrowing, mentally exhausting, and bank account draining.

Today, I do what I must. I'll count my blessings. I'll hug my family and remember how much emptier my life would be without them. Soon, I'll head out to buy water for relief workers. I'll give blood for the wounded. Most powerful of all, I'll pray...for me, for those afflicted, and for those delivered.

I'll remember that, while my childish wish didn't come true, I already have a Superman with a special day commemorating the moment he overcame Ultimate Evil. I'll celebrate that, while he didn't defeat the tornado for us yesterday, he did defeat death itself. I will forget about my less-than-miraculous Monday and his long, dark Friday.

I will affirm with word, deed, thought, and prayer that Sunday is coming. No, better than that. Miracle Sunday is here.