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Phone and prayer lines have been busy this week
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Ever since the night I came home from Cape San Blas, my thoughts, conversations and energies have been concerned with illnesses and deaths. Hopefully, the next weeks will be better for all.

  

First, there was the message on my answering machine telling of Dr. Mark Weaver’s health concerns and requesting prayers.

  

I said, very reverently, that if anyone deserved a miracle, it would be he. 

  

Although a relative newcomer, he has been a really positive force for good in this county. But it was not to be. So the whole community, not just his church, bids farewell to its Presbyterian minister and is thankful that he came our way.

  

Dawson County lost another positive force in the same week, a native who was an outspoken advocate for a number of causes.

  

Many people think of the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame when Annie Dean Samples’ name is mentioned, but that lady also stood for many other things which she believed were good for her county. She will be missed.

  

Not so much in the public eye, but a tremendous force for good in his quiet, unassuming way was Lee Pittman, whose funeral was on Mother’s Day. Those of us who were fortunate to know Lee realize that we have lost a real friend.

  

During the same week of these funerals, I have found myself checking on six friends and two relatives who have been hospitalized and sharing with others updated news of their conditions.

  

Thankfully, most of those conditions are improving. But I honestly do not remember any other week in which I have felt so surrounded with sickness.

  

It is true that most of those involved are older people (though none as old as I), and I am certainly aware that in the natural order of things, we can hardly expect to remain strong, hale and hearty indefinitely. But even my teenage granddaughter suffered a severe cold and sinus infection last week and could not participate in her school’s spring concert, which I had hoped to attend.

  

Although I am grateful to be able to make calls, send cards, fix a little food, and say lots of prayers, I often feel a bit guilty that I am the one who still up and about — though not as adequately as I’d like to be.

  

On a completely different level, I will add here, in response to questions from a number of friends: So far, we have had no ill effects on “our beach” from the oil spills, but the situation is, of course, a devastating one from which that area may never recover.

  

Perhaps it is ironic that my Bible Study Group is presently focusing on the Book of Job.

   

Helen Taylor’s column appears periodically in the Dawson Community News.