not boasting or bragging, just saying we are blessed.

we endured quite the storm here.

it was a great night for a windstorm of epic proportions to keep us awake.

(that was sarcastic.)

I had jury duty the next day.  (yay!!)

(more sarcasm.)

and the wind was howling.  so on top of noise, my mind starts going, worrying about all the possibilities of what the wind could do.  the only thing I worried about, that I could do anything about, was to check on the garbage cans.  that was at 2:22 am.

the garbage cans were fine.

(miraculously.)

when my alarm went off later that same morning, I instinctively went to my knees in prayer.

“bless and protect our family and friends this day.  bless the girls at school.  bless merrill at work.  help peyton and I to travel in safety.  protect our home in this storm.”

it seemed kind of petty to worry about our home, but a lesson that has been taught to me repeatedly is this:

if it is important to me, it is important to heavenly father.

so it wasn’t so silly to pray about my house.  I really didn’t want to come home later that day to find stress and mess waiting for us.

the girls and I watched as one tree toppled over.  it fell from one neighbor’s yard over the fence onto the other neighbor’s yard.  numerous other trees were already down around the neighborhood, fences down or panels blown out of them.  garbage, tarps, toys, branches..  just about anything you can imagine floated through our neighborhood.

our bird feeder was making all too much noise hanging from the rain gutter, banging against the eaves of the house.  it was slowly breaking apart, one piece coming off after another.  I decided to go outside and take it down.  so I grabbed the broom, but still couldn’t get it down (my height being my handicap).  so I grabbed the kids picnic table, and looked the part of a fool (or maybe you can picture a weather man on the news, standing outside in a hurricane to prove that it’s windy?), trying to walk while carrying a small table.  when I finally got it to where it needed to be, solidifying the image of fool, I climbed on top of the table, in my stocking feet, to get that bird house down.  to the horror of my children in the window watching me, the wind began to blow me, sliding me and my stocking feet off the table.  I eventually got the birdhouse down.  it did not survive.

as peyton and I drove down the street we noted more damage.  we only stopped because we knew we were supposed to, but the stop sign was bent to the ground.

my younger brother texted me to check on us.

“we are fine, but others around us aren’t.”

I received phone calls throughout the day, giving updates about damage and power outages.

when I got home at the end of the day, the winds were slightly calmer.  people were attempting to clean up.

our home was safe.  hardly touched.

so we had a two foot piece trim and a downspout fly off.  our bird feeder and hummingbird nectar holder were also casualties of the storm.  not a single shingle was shed from my roof.  but nothing more.

other people aren’t as lucky.  our old house had a tree on top of it and many good friends are having roofs re-roofed, trees removed from their yards. 

I had to laugh to myself, laugh to keep from crying, when my dad told me what he did as he got up early that same day.

“I told heavenly father what the deal was..  asked him to protect our family.”

our prayers were answered.

we do have trash to clean up, more leaves to rake.  and somebody’s kiddie pool to dispose of in our back yard, but we are blessed.