Killing Me Slowly

Have you ever felt as though you were walking outside of yourself? All around you things are happening, and yet you feel more like you are watching it rather than living it. The last few weeks have been surreal to say the least. Three weeks ago I curled into a ball in the innermost room of the house. Outside you could hear the wind and feel it move the house as winds of 75+ mph blew around us. I thought that it would never end, and when it did we couldn't leave our home. The night sky had fallen as the storm took our community and turned it inside out. We slept that night in the humidity of Florida, with no power, and no idea of what had happened to our town.

As the morning light gently woke us from our sleep, you could already hear the town surveying the damage that Charley had ravaged upon us. People crowded the streets to see what was left, and what was no more. My family was blessed to have only debris covering our yard. We could not get out of our drive because trees had fallen on either side, blocking our cars in, but none had been hit. We could barely walk through the yard from the hundreds of limbs that had fallen to the ground. But it was in this time that humanity gathered together.

I was amazed when neighbors who had never met one another began to check on the people who lived around them. "Are you ok?" was the common phrase used on that day. And throughout that week we learned what community meant. As men and women worked together to restore homes and businesses, life began to go back to what was once considered normal.

Right now we wait as Frances looms over the state of Florida. I wonder what she will do. Will she destroy our town and all that we have worked to restore? Will she take our lives into the less normal once again? I'm not sure what will happen. I am sitting in the safest place right now, Kentucky! I was one of the many who left in the mass exodus of millions of people. This storm is once again the foremost thing in our lives.