Sharing a post from a friend from Southern Illinois. [View all]
The young man who wrote this is a physician in Southern Illinois, and a friend of mine; I have known him literally since the day he was born. He posted this 'note' to his Facebook profile this morning, and as a native of "Little Egypt" myself, I found it very moving. With his permission, I'd like to share it with you all...
Amidst the ruins, hope...
None of us who live in Southern Illinois will ever forget February 29th, 2012, not even if we live to be 100 years-old. That awful day will be forever seared into our minds, for hardly a person in Southern Illinois was not touched in some way by the storms that roared through our region, leaving a trail of death, destruction and abject human misery. We all know someone who lost a loved one, a home or a job that awful morning...
Southern Illinois is 'backward' in many ways-- we lag economically and educationally behind the rest of the state, so much is true, and people often ridicule us because of that and also because we are a people of deep and abiding faith in God. In ridiculing us, however, many fail to ever see that my friends and neighbors are among the kindest, most optimistic and charitable people they will ever meet; no one truly understands life's hardships better than those who live with and see them on a daily basis...
Thursday morning dawned bright and clear, an almost-perfect early spring day here, and while the evidence of Nature's fury indisputably lay everywhere around us, if one bothered to look more closely, it was not the damage that most stood out; what dawn showed even more clearly were groups of volunteers from Christopher, Mt. Vernon, Carbondale, Carmi, Anna-Jonesboro, Benton, West Frankfort and a hundred other small towns in the area working among the rubble with chain saws, tarps, shovels, heavy equipment, generators and bare hands, bringing order out of the chaos that lay all around them. It showed a Pentecostal lady from West City standing next to a Muslim woman from Marion serving a hot breakfast to a line of people who no longer had kitchens in which to prepare a meal. It revealed a Baptist minister and a Catholic priest handing out bottled water from the back of a semi- trailer. It revealed a shelter for the homless in the basement of a Baptist church, staffed by volunteers from SIU's Hillel Foundation. Above all, what dawn on Thursday showed were neighbors standing side-by-side, giving hope to those who had lost everything, speaking a kind word to the 'shell shocked', giving a hug to those needing one and offering a shoulder to cry on to those who mourned...
There is a long road ahead of us, and the journey will not be easy; if anyone understands the truth of this, we Southern Illinoisans do. We have abundant experience with tragedy-- floods, earthquakes and tornadoes are not strangers to us-- but we WILL recover. We always have, and we always will. We are the people of "Little Egypt", and deep within us is a ruggedness and the iron will to survive. We will bury our dead, rebuild what has been destroyed and give thanks to God for the blessings we still do and always will have, because that is who we are.
We'll be OK, but if you have a minute, please say a little prayer for us. Thanks!
-- David
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