Fellowship

Just the other day I was sitting in my living room against the only inside wall of our home. We lost power only moments before. As my attempts at getting our "fail safe" weather radio to work, my mind frantically tried to recall the words of our local weather-man; things like; how far did he say the tornado was and which direction did he say it was moving. As these things were rapidly racing through my mind I had other thoughts assaulting me as well, Like "For crying out loud its almost January, these things are suppose to happen in may, august even September. Where was that ditch I thought might be safe in a time like this..." It was only a few moments of darkness, followed by a few more moments of an eerie like stillness and some how I realized that the unseen, seemingly immanent danger had passed. Later when the lights came back on the phone rang, it was a friend. Helen was our church treasurer at a small country church my husband served at several years back. Helen is in her eighties and she's almost completely blind. She spent most of the past twenty years caring for her own aging relatives. With the rapid loss of her eye sight and having no children of her own, she had ultimately conceded to leaving the only home she has lived in for most of the past fifty years. In recent months she has gone through the expense of having a mobile home placed not more than seventy-five feet from her extended relatives house in an area not far from our place here in Whitney, just outside the small town of Rio Vista. Her plans were to move from her beloved home to this trailer near the the beginning of the new year. Anyone who has had the pleasure of meeting Helen knows that the years that have taken her health and eye sight have done nothing to diminish her independent spirit. This is a person who as a young girl was proposed to while she was plucking a chicken! A young lady that thought nothing of having a gun holstered to her hip as she rode her horse. A woman up to only a few years ago that could load a full bail of hay on her truck! In the span of eighty years I am sure she has seen her share of hardship as well as Joy. But some where in that life time she found the strength of spirit that I so admire her for today. She called to say her relatives home out side of Rio Vista as well as the trailer she had planned to move into was touched and forever changed by the tornado that was in our area only minutes before, I was thankful she was not in that trailer and that her relatives were all safe. We spent the evening with Helen yesterday. My husband went out for fried chicken, (her favorite). We sat in her living room, in that home she has lived in for the better part of a century and were grateful for the fellowship we shared.....