September Goals | Hurricane Irene

My family and I experienced our first hurricane last weekend. We thought a vacation in Myrtle Beach was in our future, but we forgot that we cannot tell the future and in fact it was Irene that we would face. We stayed in Kinston in our home to hold down the fort, but we felt anything but in control. We lost power at 6:40am Saturday morning and as of right now, we still have no power at our home. During the storm, my mom and I watched two humongous trees fall on our neighbor’s house and we felt so helpless.

When the rain and wind finally ceased (Irene stayed with us on the North Carolina Coast for nearly 18 hours), we ventured outside and saw the damage. It was significant. When we attended church on Sunday (in a powerless building – but thankfully still standing), we heard about the tragedies around our community. Homes had been completely destroyed either by flooding or the massive pine trees that crashed through roofs. We feel so fortunate that we only experienced a little damage on our New Bern house when our largest tree fell directly toward it. The top landed on the roof, but did not break through.

In light of this situation, I have decided to scrap my goals (as of right now, I may revisit this in a week or two) and go in a different direction.

Here is a list of all the things my family and I have to be thankful for.

• A roof over our heads
• A contract on our New Bern house
• Generous friends who have cooked meals for us, let us borrow their generators and chainsaws, and allowed us to stay in their home
• Parents that support us and help us on a regular basis
• A community that works together to help those around us
• Neighbors that check up on us
• A strong, capable, knowledgeable, loyal husband and daddy who can take care of his family when disaster strikes.
• A Lord who is so powerful and yet speaks in a whisper.
• A God who allows chaos and tragedy in our lives so that we can be reconciled and turn back to him.
• A Savior who reaches into the chaos and saves us from our own destruction.

 These photos are taken from the same spot in our New Bern house. The one on the left shows just how massive that tree was and the one on the right shows how much work five guys and two chainsaws can do in five hours.

This is the view from our back door in Kinston. The photo on the left shows the two trees on our neighbor’s house (you cannot even see the house).

We had a candlelit dinner during Irene thanks to the resourcefulness of my husband, our little propane camping stove and some frozen Scarsella’s meatballs and sauce (my favorite Italian restaurant from back home in Ohio).