WEST POINT, Ga. (WRBL) — Monday afternoon people who lost everything in the Sunday morning tornado that hit along West Point Road were picking up the pieces.

One of those people was 72-year-old Sherry Bennett. Her grown children were helping her.

And they were busy — and thankful.

“I almost started crying when we pulled up because just in this other room where the front windows are is where my mother was asleep when the storm hit,” said April Bartley, Sherry’s daughter. “And those windows blew in on her.” 

A reporter asked Sherry what she was thinking as she stood outside that window busily sorting through the rubble.

“I am thinking I am lucky to be alive,” she said.

That is a conclusion that Sherry and her daughter, April, reached in the aftermath of the destruction. Her house sustained massive damage. The window she was sleeping under shattered, and Sherry didn’t suffer the first scratch, much less a cut.

“I got the call before 7 o’clock,” April said. “My mom called me crying. She said a tornado had hit the house. There’s glass everywhere. I don’t know where the dog is. I was just trying to talk her through and then she looked outside. And saw that the neighborhood was a disaster.” 

Monday afternoon, inside a house that was leaking water and would probably have to be torn down, two things stood out. 

A glass cross in the dining room inside a china cabinet was unscathed. And there was a sign on a shelf not five feet from where she was sleeping — “Trust in the Lord; and don’t be afraid,” it read. There was a cross hanging in the middle of it.

April found meaning in that small sign.

“God knows what he’s doing,” she said. “And I have to trust him. And what I kept telling myself yesterday, is faith over fear. The devil will want us to be afraid. Satin wants us to be fearful at this time. But we cannot. We have to have faith. And we have to have gratitude for the things that we have. And this just goes to show you that God is at work.” 

For 44 years, Sherry has lived at 25 First Avenue. She says she likely won’t return.

But wherever she goes, she knows she was blessed. Sherry said she felt the Lord’s arms around her Monday, even as she lost many of her possessions, including her car which was tossed against the house like a toy.

“I mean I really feel his provisions today,” she said. “I mean, I’m just amazed that I am still here.”