What a weird school year….

Well we are coming FINALLY to the end of this school year. Here in the Deep South, snow is something we rarely see. We may get flurries (which by the way is enough for the school board to cancel schools) or if we are lucky a dusting. For those of you up North, a dusting, is when it snows enough to lay on top of the grass, but you can still see grass through the snow. It’s not a measurable amount of snow.

But this year, we got ten inches of snow. Birthday snow! My favorite kind. And built snow men. And missed seven days of school. We only have two weather days on our calendar, so that meant we had to add 5 days in there somewhere. Then in April, tornadoes. We had three tornadoes touch down in the area of our school alone. An F1, F4 and the rare and deadly F5. We were without power here for 8 days. So that meant 5 more days of school to make up. This wasn’t five days we were sitting at home playing video games. Our entire community was finding ways to help those who’d lost everything. Teachers, students, parents were all out in neighborhoods, cleaning up debris, delivering food, sorting through a life time of things, trying hard to find anything that was salvageable for friends and family.

But our state passed a bill allowing the school district to be exempt from Act of God type days. So we don’t have to make up the tornado days. As one school superintendent said, our kids were not out goofing off that week, they were volunteering their time and they learned more in those 8 days than their teachers and parents could teach them in a lifetime. Some disagreed with not making up school days, but as a parent, I did not. I think it was the best decision our representatives could have made. Our kids did learn more in that week than they ever could have learned in a classroom. My prayer is that no other school district ever have to make such a decision again. There are just some things children should never learn…

So finally we are nearing the end of this school year. I have never been so ready for summer in my entire life. I want to swim, sleep late, do my genealogy (remember that, yeah I’d like to find time for it again. LOL). I want to help friends move into brand new homes. I want to ooh and ahh over their new digs and be happy for them. I’ve cried way too many tears in the last three weeks. I want to give hugs of joy now. I want to say, “Congrats” not “I am sorry”. I want to dance.

How is the Deep South doing you ask? Well, we are slowly finishing the process of people getting out of their homes what was salvageable. Now we are moving to the cleanup stage. Every where you look there are huge piles of debris burning. (Not good for my allergies). Bulldozers run from sun up to sun down in the affected areas, trying to get homesites ready for builders to come in for the next stage. We are an area that is still hurting, but we are a strong people. Every day I pray for my friends who have lost their homes. And for people I have never met who lost everything, including most of their family that horrible day.

And then I turn on the TV and see the flooding along the Mississippi, and I know it’s not just my part of the Deep South that is hurting this spring. And I am thankful that God does not limit the number of prayers we can have. In fact, He encourages us to pray without ceasing. So that is all I ask of you. Pray for us without ceasing. Donate what you can to help the affected areas. And thank you for the prayers you have already prayed for our communities. They have been greatly felt.

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