You've seen it on the news, people wandering around in shock, having just emerged from their basement or storm shelter to find their "life" has blown away. If they are lucky, no family members were injured and as they look through the rubble of their life maybe they will find a couple of family photos, a special trinket from a child, an unbroken dish, or favorite quilt. People desperately looking for missing family members, family pets and in the midst of their despair they have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going on.
I cannot even fathom what these people must be going through. The closest I've ever come to a disaster is a few years ago a wind storm came roaring through town and almost 500,00 people were without power for a number of days. I was without power for 8 days and I lost everything in my refrigerater and freezer and I couldn't watch TV. Wow, and I thought I was living on the edge of civilization, how ridiculous that sounds compared to these people's reality.
But you can already start to see it, in the news reports and videos. HOPE. Everywhere, people are stepping up, donating supplies and time. They are coming from out of state to help rebuild, using their skills and expertise to help complete strangers. I would call it the human spirit, but I have also seen it with animals. I'm sure many of you have seen on Youtube and Facebook the videos of a dog dragging another injured dog out of the middle of the street, the elephant saving her baby from drowning in a lake and many others. So I can't really call it the "human" spirit. Maybe you can just call it the spirit or the soul of every living creature, but whatever it is, you can see it in the survivors of Friday's tragedy. They are pitching in to help their neighbors, they vow to rebuild their town, their school, their lives.
The evening news tonight showed a church in Henryville, IN, and it was full, and you could see the hope in their faces. They were people who were left with nothing, yet they still contributed to the collection plate in order to help others. You never know your own strength until you are tested. It would be easy for these people to wallow in self pity and who could blame them, and maybe they did for a few hours or a day or two, but they have picked themselves up and gotten back to the business of living.
Hope is a magical thing.
My thoughts and prayers are with all the victims, first responders, volunteers and anyone else involved. But I do wonder, celebrities are always good about holding telethons and fund raisers for victims of natural disasters in other countries, and rightfully so, I commend them for it. I just hope they will do the same for the victims of natural disasters here in the United States.
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