Today marks one year since the direct hit of Hurricane Ike on our part of Texas.
I can't even tell you what it's like to feel so helpless in a situation like that. Do you stay or leave? When do you leave? What if there's no gas to get out of town? What if traffic is so bad that you literally can't get out of town? What do you take with you? What if you have no home to come back to? It was so scary!
Thankfully, we did have a home to come back to. It was so weird though, to come back and the entire City of Houston had 100% power outage for over a week. Some areas for several weeks. It is very weird to have to live on the supplies that you have in your home and to know that when you run out, that's it. There are no stores to get food or supplies at. And if you are on a water well like our neighborhood, you have no running water without power. You just don't realize all of the ammenities you have until you no longer have them.
Thank goodness my MIL is the prepared one! She had plenty of food. They have gas so we were able to cook and they had generators so that we were able to have some power. They were also on City water, so they had water. We stayed with them for 8 days because we had nothing at our house (no power, water, supplies).
It was a day by day thing, waiting to see if the power company would make it out to your area. There were so many power lines down all over Houston. Can you imagine the amount of crews it took to repair all of those lines? They brought in people from all over the US to help out and they worked around the clock. They were definitely the heroes after the hurricane! (I should probably remind you that in our area, during this time of year, temps are in the 90's!)
As we waited for power to come back on, we celebrated our wedding Anniversary. Outback Steakhouse had power, so we at least got to go out to eat. We will be celebrating our 10 year Anniversary on the 18th!
In other news, this time also marks the One Year Anniversary of my church, Lifepoint. I was not attending in the beginning, but today (yes I went to church today!) our Pastor talked about how they had their first service on 9/7 and then came the Hurricane! Talk about Satan doing everything he could to try and stop a good thing! It took a couple of months before they were able to have another service. Our Pastor reflected today on the past year and how sometimes, no matter how much time we spend planning and preparing, things don't always turn out exactly how we expected them to look like. Obedience doesn't always mean easy times. Obedience is not a transaction with God, where we will be rewarded if we are obedient. It doesn't always work that way, so we have to ask ourselves the reason "why" we should be obedient.
We talked today about moving forward with our church and what it will take to get to the next step. By nature, most of us are rebels. We have to find the "why" behind the obedience. Our Pastor said we have to become "missional", where we do certain things intentionally. We have to make a choice to do things to be obedient. This message was so perfect for me this week, as I was rebelling against the uncomfortable situation of going to Lifegroups. It's scary, it's hard, but I have to be intentional, even if it's uncomfortable, to participate in Lifegroups. In the natural, our unintentional actions are always self-serving. If we aren't intentional in our actions, alot of times we will continue to do only the things that serve ourselves.
Jesus used 12 unlikely men to change the world. He sat them down for the Last Supper, knowing how significant and meaningful it would later become. Today, as we had the Lord's Supper at church, we were told the "why" behind obedience. Jesus is the WHY!!!! Because He gave His life for us, we will be obedient to Him! It was so moving, so emotional, and exactly what I needed to get over myself and remember why I am going to church!
Also, thank you to those of you who prayed for my situation with the small groups meeting (Lifegroups), because the group that originally invited us to join their group has offered to move the group to another day so that we will be able to come! We are having our first meeting on Wednesday.......isn't that wonderful?!!
As we waited for power to come back on, we celebrated our wedding Anniversary. Outback Steakhouse had power, so we at least got to go out to eat. We will be celebrating our 10 year Anniversary on the 18th!In other news, this time also marks the One Year Anniversary of my church, Lifepoint. I was not attending in the beginning, but today (yes I went to church today!) our Pastor talked about how they had their first service on 9/7 and then came the Hurricane! Talk about Satan doing everything he could to try and stop a good thing! It took a couple of months before they were able to have another service. Our Pastor reflected today on the past year and how sometimes, no matter how much time we spend planning and preparing, things don't always turn out exactly how we expected them to look like. Obedience doesn't always mean easy times. Obedience is not a transaction with God, where we will be rewarded if we are obedient. It doesn't always work that way, so we have to ask ourselves the reason "why" we should be obedient.
We talked today about moving forward with our church and what it will take to get to the next step. By nature, most of us are rebels. We have to find the "why" behind the obedience. Our Pastor said we have to become "missional", where we do certain things intentionally. We have to make a choice to do things to be obedient. This message was so perfect for me this week, as I was rebelling against the uncomfortable situation of going to Lifegroups. It's scary, it's hard, but I have to be intentional, even if it's uncomfortable, to participate in Lifegroups. In the natural, our unintentional actions are always self-serving. If we aren't intentional in our actions, alot of times we will continue to do only the things that serve ourselves.
Jesus used 12 unlikely men to change the world. He sat them down for the Last Supper, knowing how significant and meaningful it would later become. Today, as we had the Lord's Supper at church, we were told the "why" behind obedience. Jesus is the WHY!!!! Because He gave His life for us, we will be obedient to Him! It was so moving, so emotional, and exactly what I needed to get over myself and remember why I am going to church!
Also, thank you to those of you who prayed for my situation with the small groups meeting (Lifegroups), because the group that originally invited us to join their group has offered to move the group to another day so that we will be able to come! We are having our first meeting on Wednesday.......isn't that wonderful?!!
8 comments:
WOW, I cannot believe that has already been a year ago. I could not imagine what it would be like to go through that. It was so powerful, I remember everyone here was going to the stores to stock up on water, thankfully.. we just got rain and no damage, but even this far away they were expecting power outages and some damage. So I don't even know what I would have did in your situation, I am such a paranoid person. I also remember so many people from here traveling there to work on power lines and roofing. Lots and lots of companies here were working on roofs there. So crazy. Praise God you have your family there and you could stay with them. What a blessing. Thanks for this post because I just did not realize it was a year ago.
Hurricanes or really any form of natural disasters terrify the mess out of me mainly because we suffered from the flood brought on by Hurricane Floyd. That must have been super difficult to experience what you did. Thank God you had a house to return to though!
I am so glad that you went to church and had a great time. It is truely wonderful that you were reminded of why you attend. I am also glad that the lifegroup switched days so that you are able to attend those meetings as well. You will have to keep us informed on how that is going.
Oh and the girls look super cute in their tutus!
I am so glad that you will be able to participate in the small group.
We survived Floyd. Floods everywhere afterwards amongst other disasters. Devastation for sure.
I can't even imagine what it would have been like to go through what you guys did! What a blessing to be able to go to your MIL's house! I love that pic of the girls...I remember when you posted it before! :)
I am so excited that you got so much out of church today. Again, since I didn't go, I feel like I got a little bit of church through you tonight! I'm glad that you felt there was a word there just for you today! It's so cool when God does stuff like that!
Well, I am just so excited that this week you guys will be celebrating the big 10 year anniversary! That is just amazing and awesome!
I'm really excited too for the Lifegroups situation working out and I just pray that everything will go well and you'll feel right at home!
You may not agree, but I think that hurricanes sound so much scarier than tornadoes (a regular occurrence in Kansas).
So glad you had a home to return to.
Sounds like a great church service. It's such a joy to see God working in your life and through your church. Praise God.
Love you.
Lynnette
Hey there! Just wanted to say thanks for stopping by my blog. Love having new friends. :D Also, I wanted to tell you..on your blog, you have a poem on the right hand side. "A tiny turned up nose".. you know the one. Anyway..I was feeling terribly homesick tonight for my parents who live hundreds of miles away. Almost to the point where I could just sit and cry I missed them so much. When I was younger, my dad and mom would sing me a song that went, "A tiny turned up nose..." the same one that is on your blog. It completely made my day to see that and have a feeling that regardless of the distance, they are always close at hand. So thank you for having that on your blog. A smile to my face and heart for sure..
I'm so glad that your home withstood the hurricane. I know how bad it can be without power. Over the winter we had a pretty bad outage from a storm that went through and we didn't have power for awhile. Lucky for us we weren't home for about half of it since we stayed the weekend up in the northern regions of Ohio with family. When we got home though we went to a hotel for one night that had power. We depend on electricity so much. We would really like to get a generator sometime in the future.
I can not even imagine what it would look like after a hurricane! Wow! I am so glad your house survived and for your MIL and her suplies! I am also glad you share every week about your church, I learn stuff from your posts! I am so excited for you to go to your group, it's going to be awesome!
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