A bargain with God

In the mornings, partly from evolved habit, and partly from a sort of compulsion, and recently justified by Anne Lamott (thanks, Anne!), I sit down at my computer at the same time each day.

I get my French press coffee, and I usually remember to get some breakfast to go with it, and then I check my mail, and look at the blogs I like (I always check The Sartorialist, as well as blogs of a few friends). And I listen to NPR's Morning Edition on the computer while I start to let my writing thoughts bubble to the surface. I'm chagrined to admit that I'm absorbed night and day and day and night in the story of an imaginary eighteen year old girl, and I hope I can tell her story well enough so that other people will want to make her acquaintance ... but I know this could very well just be a writing exercise. (And I try not to think about how that admission makes me feel.) Think ... read ... listen ... sip ....think ... listen ... think .... sip ...

Did you hear about that horrible tornado in Kansas? Surely you did. The pictures of the devastation are enough to take your breath away.

Well, Steve Inskeep interviewed an 80-year-old survivor this morning, and I was completely charmed by her. She said she was ashamed to admit that she didn't heed the warnings, and she didn't want to go out in the hail and rain, so she stayed in her house instead of going to the neighbors' like she should have. She weathered the storm by burying her face in a child's rocker, with a recliner over the top of her -- the roof had come off. And now she's looking for two diamond rings she'd put on top of her dresser as she was getting ready for bed. Her house is gone - one of many in a two-mile wide swath of complete obliteration. The entire town is pretty much gone now.

She sounded so matter of fact about it all that I found myself smiling just because of the way she was telling the story. She was so cheerful - simply grateful for yesterday and ready to handle today. He commented on this and she told him the reason. The utterly delightful Emma Faye Hargadine told Inskeep that she made a deal with God during the storm. She told God that if she survived, she would never be a whiner.

She's keeping her end of the bargain.