Gratefulness

       Last week was a bit strange for us. On Monday night, there was a nasty storm that passed through Goshen in the middle of the night.  I had no idea that it was even supposed to storm, mostly because I don't pay very careful attention to the weather aside from looking out the window.  So an hour or two after I finally climbed in bed and fell asleep, both Jeremy and I recieved alerts on our phones from the national weather service saying there is a serious storm coming and that we should seek shelter immidiately.  Now that I have a child, storms have suddenly become much more frightening to me.  I guess I worry that if something were to happen, I might not be able to get to Josiah in time or that I might not be able to adequetly protect him.  I was thankful that Jeremy didn't think we should wait around upstairs and look outside to see what might be coming at us before heading downstairs.  He's from Kansas and tends to look at storms as a form of entertainment rather than something to be afraid of.  Of course, I don't want to be overly cautious, but when the weather alert went off right next to my head in the middle of the night telling me to take action I just wanted to take Josiah and run for cover.  So that is exactly what we did (although Jeremy did feel the need to look outside and watch out the windows to see the storm coming).  I on the other hand scooped up our sleeping toddler and tried to take him downstairs without waking him.  Interestingly, he actually did stay asleep until the storm was over and we went back upstairs.  Once the storm was over, however, he was wide awake and we were without power, leaving our house earily quiet and creeky.  After rocking and snuggling in Josiah's bed, I didn't end up back in my own bed until about 4:30 in the morning.  Needless to say...not my best night for sleep.  A few hours later when Jeremy got up to leave for work we discovered this in our front yard...

        It seems a little silly now, but when I saw this, I was SO frustrated!  Just two weeks before, Jeremy and I spent several hours trimming branches around the bottom of the tree on the left and removing a TON of some kind of crossbread between a weed and a tree which meant I removed most of them by digging them out with a shovel rather than just pulling them up.  I also knew that we were going to have to spend the time and money to remove the tree that was damaged and replace the bare area with either more landscaping or grass.  While my attitude was pretty crappy for the first few hours of the day, it quickly became apparent that things could be much worse.  Later that morning, we went to meet some friends at a local park for a walk and play date and as I drove through town, I realized that the damage to our tree was minimal compared to the damage that so many others had suffered.  While I didn't see a lot of damage to homes (thank God), there were trees and large branches down everywhere!  It really looked like a tornado had gone through town.  In fact, the first road that I tried to take to the park was blocked entirely by a tangle of trees and power lines laying across it.  As I drove to the park, I was moved to tears by the damage sustained by so many and by my initial petty reaction to one tree down on our property.  Just the night before, as I held Josiah during the storm, I prayed over and over that God would just keep us safe.  And yet, when I woke up (safe and sound mind you) all I could think about was the fact that the storm had caused some inconvenience for us.  I realized that I needed to be grateful for the little damage that was done and for our safety!  I was also inspired to help organize efforts to bring some people together from our church to try to help with some neighborhood clean-up.

       I wish that I could say that I am just totally over the whole broken tree thing, but I am still frustrated by the fact that we have half of a pine tree standing in our front yard.  I was reminded though, to try to focus on the things that I have to be grateful for, like our next door neighbor who came over with his chainsaw and helped us remove the part of the tree that was laying in the yard.  I was also reminded to be grateful for the modern conveniences that I enjoy every day when we were without power until Wednesday night.  Since we have well water, we were without water or power for a full 48hrs and it was getting pretty tricky to flush toilets, wash dishes, save food from the freezer, keep our bathroom from smelling like an outhouse, bathe, etc., etc., etc.  While there are some nice things about not having power, like feeling no pressure to be overly connected to the world via internet, I was certainly excited when the power finally came back on!