Group Hug….
It’s been a while. My life changed this year in a big way. We moved (again). This time we moved from our home near the Gulf of Mexico (and I say near because we lived inland about eight miles) to a lake about an hour from the Gulf. The fixer-upper lake house we bought during the pandemic needs some TLC but we’re getting there. I didn’t think I’d ever move back to a small country town, but here I am back in the land of bugs, spiders, snakes, and lots of trees everywhere. It’s quaint and the floors squeak and I squeak each time a strange bug follows me into the house. But the views of the water and the sunrise and sunset are amazing. Many of you might know this because I share the sunsets around here a lot. They are too beautiful to not share!! Such as right now!
Today, however, I want to ask the world for a group hug. I love my home, my town (all the towns I’ve lived in) and my country. I love my friends, family, readers and the world in general. We have scary things happening–wars, fighting, anger, many opinions on many things, storms that have changed lives forever. So could we just take a breath and remember the good things about America. America has always been great to me. I grew up on a farm and we lived off the land. We weren’t rich but we weren’t poor either. We just did what we had to do to survive. My mama made my clothes or we ordered them from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. But with all the troubles, I had a fairly good life and the isolation of living on a farm is what caused me to turn to reading, where I could go anywhere in my imagination. That led to me realizing I had to be a writer. Not just wanted to, but had to, write books. So here we are and some of my authors friends in the states that were hit hard by Helene and her wrath, are suffering. We can pray for them and the many people who have lost homes and family and for now, their livelihoods. We can send funding and later, material things, to help them. We all know how this works. This country can pull together even when we seem divided, right?
I know this because when my husband was taking me to the airport in the wee hours of Friday, September 27th, we were on a long isolated country road that belongs to the air force base near our home. No one else was on the road at four a.m. Then we saw a row of lights shining as big trucks came rolling along toward us in the other lane. White utility trucks, staged and ready, moved through the darkness like giant angels. There must have been at least two dozen of these trucks passing us in the night. I can’t tell you how proud this made me. Men and women getting a call, loading their GO packs and heading out away from their families and toward the crisis. This is what America is to me. This is what makes our country great–always. I’m not talking politics. That subject is not allowed on this blog. I’m talking humanity and love and helping a neighbor even if that neighbor is hundreds or thousands of miles away. That’s all I’m saying. Storms, wars, troubles, worries, fear, disagreements, changes, life–these things will always be with us. But a big group hug right now, no matter, can help all of us. Positive attitudes are always more intiutive than negative vibes that just bring us all down. Hug someone. Smile at someone. Listen to someone. And try watching a sunrise or a sunset. Feel that bit of peace and think of those who are suffering more than us right now.
Okay, I’m done. I’m sending y’all a big GROUP HUG! Send me on back, will you?
