I agreed long before the end of the school year to participate in Relay for Life, a 12 hour, overnight, walk to raise money for the American Cancer Society. No, participants do not walk for 12 hours; instead, the event is held at a local track and your team is to keep someone on the track the whole time. As it turns out, that's on the honor system.
It never occurred to me that it would rain when I signed up for this. As such, I didn't even fathom that we would have downpours with tons of lightning for over an hour that would force us all indoors and essentially rain out the event at the half-way point.
They were predicting nasty weather for the K. C. area this past Friday. No matter, we all met at the track at 5:45 or so and got started building our "campsite". This involved turning a patch of grass near the side of a track in the smack-dab middle of the country into a beach scene. The kick-off was a survivors' walk. Then we all hit the track.
After seven miles and several water stops, I was ready for a real break. I even took off my shoes, but I really missed the sun warmed sand to dig my toes into that you get at the real beach! We'd been watching storms brew to our west and then head around us to the south. The light show was spectacular, but the population of the track was shrinking. Announcements were made that the sponsors and committee were checking the weather. It was strange how the people in charge of the event acted like there was no way we would have a problem when everyone could see that it was definately going to STORM.
Around 10 PM, two of us walked the only cancer survivor on our team out to her car. As we came back into the stadium, everyone was lining up around the track for a luminary ceremony. There were hundreds of paper bags lining the inside of the track in honor and in memory of cancer survivors and victims. We waited quietly near the entrance until the tell-tale HUGE drops began to spot the pavement right as they made the announcement to start lighting the candles! If you live in a place that gets real thunderstorms you know the ones that tell you it's a BIG storm. There aren't many of them, but they are the biggest rain drops in the world. They're almost like warning drops. The two of us made a silent bee-line for our campsite.
By the time we arrived, it was pouring, and a few luminaries were lit before the announcement to wait was made. All of us managed to get ourselves squeezed together under the 10 foot square tent we had. We stood and watched as the decorated bags drooped, some of them even trying to catch on fire, but they were too wet.
That first burst of rain only lasted a few minutes. Soon everyone emerged and headed back out to the track from shelter. We listened and tried in vain to light the now drenched candles while someone sang a version of "This little light of mine". Most of the luminaries were so wet, that they would not light no matter what we tried. Then they asked the crowd to join in the singing. As we started to sing, the irony of the situation hit me. Here we are singing a song about not hiding your light or letting anything happen to it and we hadn't even been able to light the candles to begin with.
We hadn't even finished the first line when the music abruptly stopped and someone gruffly made an announcement for us to all proceed directly to the locker rooms. We were not allowed back on the track until over an hour later. Our team chose to stay and hang out in the locker room until we could get our stuff; then we packed up in the rain and headed home.
I was in bed by 1:00 AM and still got a full nights' sleep. For that, I was thankful.