Warmer Feet.

 Warmer Feet.

 

This furry animal lies on my feet. She started by trying to push her alligator into my lap. Since that did not work, she just flopped down onto my toes. At least she seems happy.

 

Talked to my cousin John Pollard a bit ago. He now has seven stints to his heart and is having dialysis to keep the fluid from overcoming his body’s ability to remove it naturally. Three days a week for four hours at a time. He and his wife Wham call it an adventure. Then he proceeded to tell me that the heart doctor from either the Baptist or the Catholic hospital would not talk to his other doctor from one or the other of the hospitals. Wham had to call in another doctor to talk to both of them since they wouldn’t talk to each other. How insane can things get! No, that is not a question but an exclamation! Please say a prayer for John and Wham that life will go well for them. Wham says she has probably used up all the points of friendship asking for others to help her get to her eye doctor visits to have her cataracts removed while all this was going on. Plus, she was the one that noticed that someone had stolen their license plate while it was parked at the hospital. She was SO glad to have that police report when the insurance company said their car was involved in a hit and run!

 

The death and missing persons toll keeps going up from the flooding in Kentucky. About all we can do about those folks and those around this part of the world who are losing homes, livestock, crops, and lives to the wildfires is ask God to give us the answers and His help. Part of the answer we know—keeping our grass cut and the strips around the fields cut to the ground to provide fire barriers. Even so, only God makes weather that gives us the rain we need.

 

This is the first day of August. Schools will start soon. Well, in some places those schools might not start at all the rest of this year. We think it was hard on Jacksboro to have a tornado blow away their school, but at least they were able to use church buildings for classes. What will folks do in Kentucky where the school buses were washed away with the roads and bridges? Maybe today all the folks have been rescued from their rooftops or other buildings. But where will they live? How will they be fed? We used to have a group here in WF who went to disaster scenes like this with a bus full of ways to help people eat and be clothed. Our nation has taken in over 100,000 folks from the Ukraine. And now we will probably have at least half as many folks from Kentucky and eastern Tennessee who need places to live. The survivors from Hurricane Katrina made their way to WF that year. Wonder if we will have folks from this disaster coming this direction. We don’t have much to offer right now. Certainly not employment. Don’t think it would work out for an old woman of the plains to live in those mountains. It is a different type of countryside. Maybe they will be able to gird up their Levis and rebuild if someone gives them ideas on how to rebuild in a safer place and manner. But then, the same could be said for folks in Tornado Alley.

 

Don’t know anything uplifting today. Keith’s reading of Emily Dickinson’s poem caused me to look up the poem so the words were clear to me. She had such a different outlook on life and the use of words and phrases. Not sure if her book of poems was one that got taken away, but maybe one of these days another book will be here in my Kindle or something. Frost, Dickinson, Robinson, and several of the older poets used to keep me entertained. It amazed me that one of my children not only appreciated poetry, but wrote it as well. That hardly ever happens.

 

Let me ask you to pray for those who have lost family, homes, and their hearts to disasters here in the U.S. and other places as well. Only God can truly heal us, but our prayers help not only others but our own perceptions. Let us be grateful.

 

Rest and be happy with whatever we receive. You are loved.