THE LITTLE PORCELAIN BOXES

This is a true story, and is the reason for the little porcelain boxes (eggs to some) that are the images representing my pages.


THE LITTLE PORCELAIN BOXES



I had a dream one November night in 1987, which has been the fueling fire of my desire to serve the Lord. I was a single mom with two kids still home and my mother living with us.

I was running a private day care in my home, and was very active in my church. It had been a strange fall, even for eastTexas. Here it was the first part of November, and we were still having weather in the 80's and 90's. It seemed as if summer just didn't want to let go.

It was a Sunday and my family and I had gotten out of church late in the afternoon due to an after church pot luck dinner. The weather bureau had been predicting rain, with possibility of severe storms.

When we came out to the parking lot, we noticed that the weather was looking ominous. It was a white gray with clouds moving across the sky at a pace such as you will only see in the Texas skies. I told the kids to get into the car, and my mom was following.

A lady we had met in the church for the first time stopped me to talk about some of her personal needs. My mother who was normally very quiet, kept after me to hurry up. I was more than a little irritated with her for the rudeness, but finally she got my attention and I agreed that the sky looked like a storm was approaching.

We got home, about three miles from the church, and my mother and my son went into the bedroom to watch a the Cowboys play; and my daughter and I were in the livingroom watching something else.

I kept looking out the front window and noticing how terribly dark it was getting. Our living room faced the northwest, and would usually be the first to catch any storms coming in.

As the afternoon progressed, I kept watching these clouds coming in, and decided to check the windows in my mother's room which faced the southeast. They just had light grey clouds; nothing to remark about. My mother and my son laughed at me for being such a fanatic the about weather.

Finally I noticed that the clouds in the front of the apartment (northwest) had turned a dark mud brown. I got up off the sofa and went, one more time, to my mother's room. I told them they just had to come see the sky in the front window.

They came in and saw what I was seeing all along, and couldn't believe what they were saw. It was then that we decided to put the radio on.

Just as we tuned into our local station, the announcer came on and told us that Palestine had just been hit by a tornado. It had come up the western side of Palestine. At that time they had no idea what kind of damage had been done.

Within minutes we got a phone call from my oldest son who lived in the Westwood area of Palestine.

He said "mom, me and Joanne are ok; our house is gone, but we are fine."

It took a minute for that to sink in, and then you could have knocked me over with a light puff of air. I realized that my son and his wife had been in that tornado. While we sat watching our usual Sunday afternoon programs, their very lives were being threatened.

The really strange thing about this is that my family and I have always been very active in church and all of us claimed to be born again good faithful christians. We had raised the kids in active churches, christian schools, and tried to keep the Lord first in our lives. With this, I still have to say that my son was trying the boundries of God's will, and was trying to decide which side of the fence he would sit on.

His wife didn't know Jesus yet. She was sweet girl, but had never heard about salvation. She was watching to see what a christian was. When they called to tell us they were alright, I gathered up my mom, the two kids, and got into the car, and went over to my daughter-in -law's mom's to see for myself if they really were alright.

This was my first experience of having something threaten my family, and I didn't like it.

As we were driving over there, we noticed two small brown funnels to the north of the loop where we were crossing. It seemed too unreal to believe that we could be seeing this.

This is something people tell you about; it doesn't really happen to you, right?

My son told us that they had been watching a movie on their VCR when it suddenly got real dark. Before this, their had been no warning. It got so dark that they couldn't see outside. They were about to go outside to see what was happening, when my son said their ears felt like they were going to burst.

That was when they heard this horrible sound like standing next to the train tracks and hearing the passing of a speeding locomotive. At that time they realized what it was they were hearing. They first ran to they bathroom to get into the bathtub. That is what everyone says to do. Then for a reason my son wouldn't understand until later, something told him to get up and get out of that bathroom. They ran into the bedroom and went under the bed and pulled the mattress over their heads.

By this time, the funnel was directly over them, they could see the windows blow out and the doors blow open and shut so fast that you couldn't count the times. He said nothing in the house was blowing out, but the place was rocking in the force of this tornado.

Now, you have to know that this house was smaller that most two-car garages. It had cracks in the walls of the livingroom that you could see the outside through. There was almost no paint on the outside siding, and it was a mess. This was before the tornado. I used to joke and tell them that this house wouldn't stop a breeze. It pays to be careful what you say.

Anyway, my son told me later, that while he was under that bed, the Lord spoke to him and reminded him that he had made a committment to follow Him. Now, this wasn't a call to preach, or anything grand like that, but it was a commitment to live for Jesus.

My son told the Lord that afternoon that he would get back into church and living for Jesus.

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

I didn't hear about this part for about two weeks. I did realize how lucky they were to be alive, because within seconds of moving under the bed, a big old oak tree with a base trunk three people couldn't hug, fell into that bath tub. If they had been there they would have been killed.

This house was shown on television for better than a week which really forced us to realize how blessed they were.


Now, this brings me to the beautiful porcelain boxes.




PAGE TWO



. . . . . . . . .