Sturdy Shelters

For those of you who don’t live near us, we had a bit of a storm here in Central Illinois. A derecho, straight line winds upward of 60mph. It came out of nowhere. Usually I am up to date on the weather but this one took me by surprise.

I was working upstairs and I could hear thunder. Ines carried Maggie downstairs to the first floor when she heard the storm and I assured them it was okay. Then a few minutes later the tornado siren went off on my phone and I grabbed it and went downstairs to the kids. I told Juan to grab my purse and I grabbed Maggie and a flashlight and we went down to our basement storage room. Up to this point, we had done this before, we had this routine down.

My phone rang and it was Carlos, “I am trying to get home, the sirens are going off.” He had been out doing tree work, and was driving the truck pulling a dump trailer. I ran up and unlocked the doors and told him to be careful. At that point I saw that it was green outside and I went back down to the kids. My phone rang again and it was our friends. They were across the street at the church and needed shelter. I told them to come right inside and that the door was open. At this point I thought it was all a bit humorous. We usually have storms that pass quickly and cause disruption for the day but this time I thought, “ This is great, at least we get to spend some time with friends!”

The city sirens were going off and were quite loud so I figured I better help our friend’s kids get inside so I went upstairs to open the doors. I opened it to see that the storm had picked up with rain, wind, lightening, and thunder so I calmly welcomed the kids inside to give some reassurance that they were safe. A millisecond later the wind flew through the trees in a way I had never seen before.

Our block has trees that easily tower over houses, and I saw these sycamores and sweet gum trees bending and contorting. I tried to keep calm outwardly but I was rattled. We got all the kids downstairs and the power was already out. Maggie, the poor thing, was shivering and scared; she absolutely hates the sirens. (After she had her ear tubes replaced the tornado alarm went off and it left quite the infamous impression on her.)

The bigger kids were excited to see their friends and were doing better than they would have otherwise. Carlos finally arrived and explained that he had to pull a limb out of the road to get him and some other cars a way through. We waited a bit for the storm to pass and to let our nerves calm and went up to check outside.

At first sight I could see that there were quite a few branches down in the street. Our property was barely touched so it seemed like perhaps it was just a rough storm but nothing too bad. I went back inside to let Carlos know what was going on down the street and he and our friend went to go help clear away some branches while we moms tended the kids inside.

Well, I was wrong in my assessment.

The next three days Carlos spent majority of his time clearing driveways, yards and roofs in our city and the neighboring city which was hit with a tornado. Our house didn’t have power for about 3 days. It was the worst storm we had ever experienced while living here. So many trees fell, so many power poles snapped, so many power lines broke.

Even with all of this I couldn’t have felt more loved and blessed by God. The Lord gave us amazingly mild weather and a cool basement to sleep in. I had a gas stove and clean running water through the whole ordeal. Despite an inaccessible garage we had two coolers in the house so we could use them to store at least a little cold food. Not to mention the people! We had neighbors who helped us try to get our garage door open, priest friends who reached out amidst their own busyness to check in on us, and the most amazing friends who invited us for a pool party, stored our frozen goods, let us cool down at their house, fed us, and let us do our stinky laundry, and prayed for us.

After Mass on Sunday there were free tickets to our local baseball team’s game. I figured, why not. For the last three days we woke up not knowing what the day would be like, we only addressed the things right before us, and we received abundantly from the Lord. Here He was again offering another blessing, family time, a distraction from the wait for power.

As we drove back home from the game Ines asked if we could pray for power. We had been praying multiple times a day because of the kid’s promptings. “Mom can we please pray for the lights to turn on?” So we prayed, in thanksgiving for friends, for safety for the linemen, and for our power to return. We got ready for bed with the lights out and Carlos and I made a plan. We had scheduled a trip but we needed to access the garage in order to go. “Okay, if the power isn’t on by the early part of the week we will just have to call it off.”

I sent out a request to my friends and let them know what we were praying for and they let me know of their prayers. I started prepping for bed by candlelight and as I was brushing my teeth I saw the hallway was bright. I heard Carlos say, “Do we have power!?”

Less than 20 minutes after asking for their prayers the linemen had restored our power. Thank you Lord.

I can’t help but see the truth in these words from Scripture:

¹⁴ A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter:
he that has found one has found a treasure.
¹⁵ There is nothing so precious as a faithful friend,
and no scales can measure his excellence.
¹⁶ A faithful friend is an elixir of life;
and those who fear the Lord will find him. Sirach 6:14-16

There is a praise and worship song, called Blessed Be Your Name. The refrain says, “He gives and takes away, but my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.” It can be so difficult to bless and praise God in the tough spots, but this time it was so easy. I probably thanked Him more than I usually do.

I keep stopping and asking the Lord to help us remember this time. To remember what is was to be without power and to realize how blessed we are to normally flick on a light and expect the miracle of electricity to just do our bidding. To remember the endless and selfless generosity of others and what it is like to have nothing to offer to others but needs. To remember how to thank the Lord at every moment for the smallest gift of a breeze to the friends who have become family.

The Fourth of July is coming up and I can’t help but also be thankful for our country and the people that make it what it is. I am thankful for the people who did sacrifice and still sacrifice so that we can live in a place that we can expect to safely go to bed at night. Where we have water come out of our sink faucets, electricity easily accessible and resources when they aren’t available readily. We are blessed and I hope we don’t have to weather horrible “storms” for us to realize how blessed we all are in this country. Then again, sometimes that is the only way we learn.

If you have a moment please pray for the linemen, and their families who no doubt miss them. Pray also for the people who still don’t have power.

For those of you who hung in till the end. Here is a Maggie story…

We were in the kitchen and I was cooking and Maggie asked me to pray for the lights to come on. I had her repeat after me, “Jesus, please turn the lights back on. Amen.”

She looked up at me and said, “Okay Mama, turn on the lights.”

That is the faith of a child. May we all have this kind of faith so we can enter the kingdom of heaven.