What is your phobia?

I write on Arkansas Women Bloggers’ Website, today, about what used to be my phobia, and once you read it, you will know why it was my fear and how I got rid of it.

For more excitement you can read some of my posts about fear:

• The Near Disaster
• The Traumatic “What If”
• The Solution for Trauma Insomnia
• The Ruskin Heights Tornado
• Ten Steps to Tornado Safety
• How to Prepare for a Tornado
• How not to Be Afraid
• Me, Being the Go-to Gal for Tornadoes
• My Mom

And finally, before you skip on over to Arkansas Women Bloggers, allow me to tell you a story about a daughter of a friend of mine. I’ll call her Emily.

Emily was a newly wed and at first, she and her husband lived in her parents’ hunting cabin, in the form of an old trailer house, near a river around here, while they worked to build up savings and tried to find the perfect house. They also needed to buy the furniture for their new life and had just purchased a brand new hide-a-bed couch and had placed in the living room of that trailer house. On a whim, one night, they decided to try out the mattress inside that new couch.

That night, unbeknownst to them, a tornado approached and tried to take their lives. However, since they were asleep in the hide-a-bed when it hit and lifted and rolled the trailer house, their “bed” folded up upon them and enclosed them in that brand new mattress while all the jumble of being in a tornado was going on.

They escaped unharmed except for bruises.

After examining the damage they realized the rest of the miraculous protection they had received that night: In their bedroom, where they might have been except for the “random” decision to try out the new mattress in the living room, they found the dresser had landed on the mattress of their bed and had cut it into two pieces.

They would have been dead except…

Before very long they bought a beautiful, old. two-story house in the graceful section of town and another tornado hit, toppling an old oak tree directly into their upstairs bedroom. They were not at home, another “random” decision, this time to accept an impromptu dinner invitation.

After that, Emily was convinced she was the safe one during tornadoes.

We live where large-scale farmers grow tomatoes for market. Emily’s job was humble, working in the tomato fields alongside migrant workers, picking tomatoes.

It pays.

One day, as they all were working, a tornado approached, visibly, and, of course, all the workers were terrified.

Except for Emily..

She firmly commanded all the migrant workers–who all were men–to gather around her, as she claimed God would not let a tornado harm her. They believed her, and like a mother hen, Emily enclosed all those men very close to her, wrapping her arms around them, and they all prayed, not all in English.

The tornado lifted.

She was right.

And I aim to be like her, someday.

Okay, NOW go on over to Arkansas Women Bloggers and learn more about my old phobia!