GOSHEN, Ala. (AP) - One by one, they glued small bits of polished, colored glass onto a framed butterfly mosaic at the Goshen memorial Sunday morning.
Those who lost family in the tornado, which killed 20 at Goshen United Methodist Church when it slammed into the building during worship on Palm Sunday, slowly filled that butterfly.
“Out of pieces that are broken, beauty will come,” the Rev. Joe DeWitte told the hundred or so gathered at the memorial Sunday for a special 20th anniversary service to remember those lost so quickly to the tornado.
Pat Watson was among those who placed a piece of glass into the butterfly. Watson lost her son, Derek, daughter-in-law Kay and granddaughter, Jessica in the church that morning on March 27, 1994.
Watson didn’t come to the first special service, held not long after the tornado. It was just too hard, she said.
“But I decided this morning that you just have to face everything. Life is going to be bumpy all the way,” Watson said. “It’s so hard to think about. Deep in your heart, things are still there.”
Joining Watson in filling that butterfly was the Rev. Kelly Clem, her husband Dale, and daughter Laurel, who along with Clem’s other daughter Sarah, lost Clem’s 4-year-old daughter Hannah in the church that morning. Clem was the Goshen church’s pastor at the time.
Sunday’s service was Joyce Woods’ first as well. Woods was recovering in a Birmingham hospital when the first was held. She and her daughter Janet both survived inside the church that morning, and again in their Goshen home, ripped apart by another tornado April 27, 2011.
“They say you can forget, but some things you can always remember,” Woods said, seated at the memorial Sunday morning.
After a brief service at the memorial, survivors, church members and those who remember the stories walked to Goshen United Methodist, a few hundred yards south of the memorial, at the church’s former site on Alabama 9.
Inside the church, Clem gave a sermon to some of the same people who were in the church the morning the tornado came over the hills.
Clem spoke of the musical “Watch the Lamb” being presented when the tornado came, describing the play as a powerful, inspired Biblical portrayal that everyone got caught up in. Clem’s daughter, Hannah, had asked to perform in the musical after watching a rehearsal, Clem said.
“As we sang and watched, the murmurings of thunder felt like a drum roll,” Clem told the congregation Sunday. “Adding music and punctuation to everything we put into it.”
Clem said those who participated in that musical felt the power of the moment. They felt like actors in a movie, she said.
“And when the tornado hit it was as if the cameras kept rolling,” Clem said. “To a day back in time. No electricity. The walls were down. Some of us opened our eyes. Many didn’t. We were no longer actors.”
“More than ever before, in that one tiny little moment we realized that God’s story was our story,” Clem said. “Joy and celebration. Chaos and confusion. Suffering and death. That story. Our story, and they were strangely and suddenly inseparable.”
The world began joining the church in trying to make sense of what had happened, Clem said, to find where God was in all of it.
“God was here. God is here,” Clem said. “It was God’s story that we were telling. It’s God’s story that we’re living.”
Clem said church members were living the story long before the tornado came. She spoke of those by name, who she explained were loving people before the winds ever came to Goshen Valley.
She spoke of Joyce and Janet Woods, who on Clem’s first day at the Goshen church volunteered to help with the Clem children during the service, and who sheltered Clem’s own daughter, Sarah, when the tornado knocked down the walls of the little sanctuary.
“Buddy Woods. Husband and father who loved all the kids in the church,” Clem said. “Kay Watson. Poor thing. Preacher’s kid. Loved the church though, and she loved Derek and their precious daughter Jessica.”
Clem said that all those she spoke of, those living and those who died, “were already in God’s story, even before March 27.”
In the days and months after the tornado there were always signs that God was still there, gifts from all over the world, Easter baskets for the church’s children and stained-glass windows for the new church.
“In every way imaginable, God whispered the story into our hearts. There were butterfly moments, rainbow moments, sunrise moments. Moments beyond explanation,” Clem said, each reminders that the story isn’t over.
As Clem preached Sunday, sunlight lit the image of a butterfly, outlined in stained-glass high above the lectern. Seen from above, the rebuilt church building itself is shaped like a butterfly - a symbol of resurrection.
While it’s important to look back, Clem said, doing so without hope would be too painful.
“Yes we will suffer. Yes, life is hard. But we persevere because God gives us reason to live,” Clem said.
Many church survivors who were children 20 years ago are married today with their own children, Clem said, proof enough that they have hope.
“It’s God’s story. Our little Hannah had the child-like audacity to believe that she belonged in God’s story,” Clem said. “And the childhood faith to know that she and God where in this together.
“Like Hannah, I am so honored to be in this story of God’s love, healing, vision and hope. This is our story. This is our song.”
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Information from: The Anniston Star, https://www.annistonstar.com/
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