TORNADOES IN THE NIGHT

Lisa Weaver

The setting was unfamiliar for our third grade son’s first solo sleepover camp, a two-day, one-night choir retreat. Prayers, silent and otherwise, followed him in more ways than I knew. For his part, long anticipation trumped lack of familiarity as he waved cheerfully from the window of the yellow bus pulling out for its fifty-mile journey. He was well prepared—lugging an overnight bag filled by his mother with Band-Aids, flashlight, extra socks, a favorite stuffed animal, an umbrella. Kisses, hugs, and "Eat some vegetables and brush your teeth," covered the rest.

Except for tornadoes.

The sunny morning skies gradually gave way to ominous clouds and severe weather warnings. By nightfall the TV radar featured a massive storm system, seemingly fixed over our son’s location.

Our son fears storms. At the smallest rumble of thunder he is first to zip downstairs to the basement and first to suggest remaining there with sleeping bags if it is night. Positioned next to me, we hold hands until either sleep or calm arrives. But this time—amid the thunder, lightning, hail, and torrential rain—he was far away. My husband and I woke continuously through the night, worrying aloud each time.

At long last, the night passed. Eagerly I awaited afternoon, when I could pick him up and smother him with kisses. He immediately showed me all his choir music, paging through and singing each piece. We laughed as he told me about the acts in the ‘non-talent’ show, and revealed which cafeteria vegetables he chose to eat and which ones he rejected.

But by far the most dramatic story concerned the tornado warnings. Three times in the night the air horn sounded, and he stumbled through the dark with cabin mates and parent-chaperone to the bathhouse which served as camp storm shelter. The storm was really loud, and really scary, he reported, and lasted so long.

"When morning came, I just couldn’t believe it—I couldn’t believe I had made it," he concluded.

His story headlined our family news for the next week. We talked through the events, amazed at both the timing and ferocity of the storm. He retold the story to his grandparents, our neighbors, and adults from church. We were happy to see his enthusiasm for choir continue unabated, and pleased with his resiliency and the potential for growth that showed itself.

Eventually the intensity of the experience diminished. A new school year began, with weekly choir practices the following week. At pick-up after the first practice, a woman approached me, verified which son was mine, then identified herself as the parent chaperone in his cabin during the tornado warnings. "I wanted you to know," she said, "that I prayed with your son during the storm. When we finally got back into our beds, he was still scared, and I wanted to help him. I wasn’t sure how to ask if that was something he would like me to do with him. So finally I thought to say, ‘Does your mom pray with you?’ He said yes, so I prayed with him."

Does your mom pray with you?

With that simple question, so sensitively asked, came a montage of memories stretching from my own warm childhood to present bedtimes with my son. I still repeat the prayer my parents said with me: "Oh Thou Tender Shepherd, hear us, bless Thy little lambs tonight. Through the darkness be Thou near us, keep us safe ‘till morning light . . . " and ending with a recitation of family names.

Countless times I have said this prayer with my son. I thought of evenings when yawns engulfed my words to the point of giggle-producing distortion, of times when stuffed animal names joined the listing of family members, or nights when my son was already half-asleep and I would whisper the words more to myself than him. I recalled saying the words together, our smiling eyes meeting. Gratitude flooded me for this pattern that I had known as a child, and that he now knew.

That night at bed I told my son about meeting the parent chaperone from the choir retreat and her story of praying with him. Had that helped him feel less frightened, I asked. "A little," he answered, burrowing under his cover, then popping up again like a prairie dog. I told him I was glad the other mom could help him remember how God was always with him.

Then as my son became more intent on digging tunnels in his bedcovers than chatting about serious matters, I was left to reflect by myself on a book I had just finished—The Iceberg Hermit (Arthur Roth, Scholastic, 1974). It recounts the experience of seventeen-year-old Allan Gordon, an eighteenth-century crewman on a whaling ship in the Arctic. The only crewman alive after the ship crashes into an iceberg, Allan survives seven years there with a polar bear cub as companion and is eventually rescued by another whaling ship.

I had described Allan’s story one suppertime. One detail particularly amused us. Before the ill-fated voyage, Allan had received a Bible from his mother, with instructions to read one page each day. Since he kept this small Bible in his coat pocket, it was with him when he was thrown from the ship and stranded on the iceberg.

That first day, amid his dire circumstances, he read one page of the Bible because "Mother told him to." I envisioned him reaching the end of that page then stopping in mid-sentence—why read the second page when Mother had said nothing about that! We all laughed at this image, and I teased my son about always following my instructions because it might someday get him off an iceberg.

That, of course, is a stretch. But it reminds us that our rituals and practices do reflect and reveal who we are and what we believe. Similarly, our religious patterns can develop and strengthen our faith, even though they are not the entity into which we should put our faith.

The prayer I say each night with my son is a family faith practice—a steady feature in our lives together. Its significance lies in its regularity of occurrence, in the comforting images created by the words, in the knowledge that Grandma and Grandpa said this same prayer with Mommy every night when she was a little girl. I am committed to marking the end of each day this way.

Prayer tells our children that we sense God as a current within our daily lives—a current that will carry us beyond that moment of prayer into the world where we are called to faithful action and witness. I pray with my son each night and I am thankful that he has witnessed this tangible evidence of his parents’ commitment to God. As he grows, I hope he will also see the less tangible prayers in our lives—those nonverbal prayers that dwell within our hearts and emerge through our hands and feet.

—Lisa Weaver, Madison, Wisconsin, is the author of Praying with Our Feet (Herald Press), a recently published children’s picture book which further explores the action of prayer. Weaver cherishes time spent with her family.