Me and mine are Safe

I still can't process what happened. I've been gone this past week helping lead a high school bike trip with my church. We biked around the southern portion of the state and we were in Faribault at the time of the tragedy. I feel very detached from what happened and I'm now just able to see images and learn the full extent of what happened. It's hard to wrap my mind around. I am just so thankful that the loss of life was so minimal with how bad it could have been. My heart grieves for those who died and their families. I still feel very emotional about it. I just watched some online coverage of the collapse and honestly, I started crying, 3 days after it happened.

My reaction to this reminds me of two different events in my life. The first is obviously 9-11, when I learned of the Pentagon attack by looking out of my apartment at the Pentagon in flames. Yet in many ways, my reaction is more similar to how I felt when my Grandpa Meisner died when I was on a boat in Australia. His funeral happened by the time I even got word he had died. It took me months to fully process that because I feel like I had missed out on part of the grieving process. And with this 35W tragedy, I feel like being out of town, away from TV and media, I missed out on that initial grieving process. It's an odd feeling, and feels rather selfish, but it is what it is.

My prayers go out to all who have been affected (and for that matter will be for years to come).