I’m stronger now

Saturday, May 12, 2018

August 2013

by Maggie

After the big storm devastated everything, I was a mess. I was cold, wet, hungry, afraid, and homeless. My smoothskins had vanished. I had nothing. I was nothing. 

Then in my most vulnerable state they captured me and put me in a cage. Oh, these smoothskins were kind enough, but it was all quite terrifying. Cages. Unfamiliar places. Strange smells. Relocation. Uncertainty. Hopelessness. 

Just when I thought life couldn’t get any harder, I was shipped further away from home to a foreign land. All hopes of seeing my smoothskins again were dashed. They would never be able to find me. 

Then She came into my life. She took me in. She nurtured me. She sheltered me. She loved me. And slowly I began to recover. Little by little I began to blossom in Her care. And now I am home and She is Alpha.  

There’s a tree beside our house that has beautiful flowers on it. I have watched them grow from small little balls to great huge white blooms and then, in time, to fade and fall away. I can relate to that tree.  I have blossomed into a beautiful creature here. And I expect that, one day, I, too, will begin to fade and will fall away. I’m beginning to see the signs even now. And I sense the same in my Buddy. Together we are old. 

As I reflect on it all, I see that I was devastated but not demolished. I was lost but She found me. And now life is good. 

(Maggie came to Kentucky in November of 2005 after she was displaced in August by Hurricane Katrina. She was rescued in the gulf coast of Mississippi — the Magnolia State —  and transported eventually to Kentucky. She has shown us what resilience and fortitude are all about. She is our Steel Magnolia.)