After the Storm (Part 2)

The next morning came and the air felt fresh as we walked outside to a beautiful cool morning. The sky was clear and the trees stood still. I could hear all the birds churping and as I looked around I noticed that I wasn't the only person outside that morning. Several people were outside in their night clothes walking around in their yards to survey their damages. The neighborhood had been beaten up a bit with trees split in half, trees fallen, trash cans in the road, tree limbs everywhere in the ground but nothing too serious. Soon news travels and we were informed by a neighbor that this is just the beginning of the aftermath of the storm. We will have no electricity for at least a week. The whole county of over 650,000 people was without power. I thought to myself, it's ok it can't be that bad, we just lost power in the county. Well, I was far from right. There was a reason for our power outage and it was a tragic reason. Dozens of tornadoes swirled through our county that night and caused massive damage. Many homes were destroyed due to tornadoes from the storm. Over 300 people lost their lives. We were only hearing the beginning of the devastation that morning on our battery powered radio. Their were roads wiped out and flooded. Rescues was still taking place that morning. We were urged to stay home until the roads were made safe to drive on due to down utility poles and live wires everywhere in town. The next thing that happened was the worrying began to set in for many neighbors who were not prepared to having no power. They spoke "How are we to eat if there's no grocery stores open? How can we get gas for our generators or cars if there's no gas stations open? How can I get my medications if there's no pharmacie open? How do we get money if there's no atm machines working due to having no power? How can we call for help when there's nowhere to charge our phones or plug them in? It felt like a very helpless situation to all of us.  But, through these times of hardships that's when people's true God given kindess comes out. We as a neighborhood worked together to help each other survive the week that we were without power. As the gas stations, pharmacies, hospitals, and grocery stories began to open they would only take cash! The were operating off of generators themselves and didn't have to capacity to get the debit machines up and running. It's during those times when you're thankful for a husband that always prepares for the worse. It's the little things that I don't see that he does to protect and help his family. He had stored emergency cash in a safe place for us. It allowed us to get gas for our generator and cars, food, candles, charcoal, grill, and many other things to make life as normal as possible for us and our friends.  We posted a sign on our mailbox which read "Free hot coffee, bring your cup" and "Free use of generator, bring your gas". We met so many wonderful neighbors and had so much fun during the power outage. We realized how much we love spending quality time together without the distraction of the phone, tv, internet, and all the modern techology to steals our time from our kids and spouse. It was an eye opening experience. My daughter realized how many other things she can do to occupy her time. We played kick ball, went fishing (with hotdogs and bread) lol, planted flowers, dug for worms, went walking, bike riding, read books, wrote letters to send to people, played board games, used camera to take pictures of awesome things, played with playdoo, jumped on the trampoline, danced, sung, roasted marshmellows with the neighbors, studied the stars with a telescope and awesome neighbors, had a barbeque party, and was actually a little disappointed with the power returned two days ago.  Thank God for helping all of us to make the best of a bad situation without complaining and just being thankful for the test and trials that came to this town.