Helpless

**UPDATE 1.30.08**

My parents and the kids got in yesterday after waiting in line for 3 hours for gas. Reminds me of this story. The town is telling them it could be up to 30 days until they get power. The stores are running out of food and people are trying to get out of town when they can. I have learned from this that I need to keep cash on me just incase of an emergency like this.  The stores and gas stationthat are opening are only allowing peolpe to buy food and gas with cash only.

Helpless, pretty much sums up how I have felt all day.

 

As many of you know and I have posted some, I am originally from a far West Kentucky town call Mayfield.  Monday night they began receive freezing rain.  It didn’t stop and around 3:30 am. Tuesday morning my parents and the rest of the people in the town lost power.  Since then they have had about 3 more rounds of freezing rain come in. The news is reporting that it is the hardest town hit by the ice storm.

My parents only have eclectic heat and this has worried me to death.  Last night when I talked to them they said that it is about 40 degrees inside the house and they hadn’t got out of bed all day.  There were warming centers set up throughout the town but they weren’t going to go. They were wearing 4 layers of clothing, a toboggan, and gloves.  They have no way to warm up the food they have in the refrigerator and they have come up with some interesting ways to warm up a hamburger. 🙂 A neighbor last night made them a pot of soup on their gas stove.  I didn’t know people still have them these days but I guess it comes in handy in times like this. I didn’t get to talk to them much more last night as the land line is down and they were using their cell phone and was needing to take it out to the car to charge.

I call them this morning and had a tough time getting a hold of them. Once I did, I encouraged them to pack up my brother’s family and make the 2.5 hour trip to Nashville.  They are being told that the town will be out of power for at least another 5 days. They weren’t for sure what they were going to do.  My brother’s family spent last night at one of the warming centers stationed at the hospital, except for my sister-in-law (she was more worried about the 2 cats than being warm with the family). All the stores and gas stations are closed and now my brother realizes that he is out of his seizure medication. While he was at the hospital the doctors there gave him one pill but like that is going to last him for 5 more days.

This afternoon around 3 I began getting text from my sister-in-law.  My brother was able to get a hold of his pharmacist at her house and she went and opened the store just to get his meds. That is the good thing about living in a small town, they know who you are and will drop whatever to help.  My sister-in-law told me that they were all doing fine and that they couldn’t make it to Nashville since they didn’t have enough gas to get here. So I began to start thinking about driving tonight to take gas to them and help everyone get back to Nashville. But they told me to just stay here as they didn’t want to have to worry about me on the road and the town was under strict curfew at 5:15, sundown.  The last text I got from my sister-in-law said, “There are people dead and the morgue is backed up. Everyone on life support died at the hospital [because] generators went out.” As you can imagine I just broke down at work when I saw that.  I feel so helpless. 

I know God is in control but when things like this happen I want to take over. I feel like I should be doing something to protect my family.  My heart breaks right now and all I can do is fall on my knees and pray. I love them all so much and don’t know what I would do without one single one of them in my life. I keep having images of having to say good bye to all of them. There is no way I could go through that.  I know this is just the Devil trying to break me down and he sure is doing a good job at it.

I ask you tonight to pray for everyone that is evolved in this ice storm somehow.