Hurricane Irma

This is a view from our front yard into the street where we live, or rather, the lake that the street became.  This was Monday afternoon, after the storm had passed through in the wee hours of the morning.

In one of my favorite movies, there's this line, "I've just sucked one year of your life away....Tell me, how do you feel?" (Extra points for you if you can name that movie.)  That's how I feel in the wake of Hurricane Irma; like it just sucked a week and a half of my life away.  From the way-in-advance notice and hype and predictions of the storm, to the actual event, to the subsequent cleanup and waiting for power to be restored, I just spent the last week and a half in an eerie other world.  Truthfully, I'm ready to come back to my life and never hear the name "Irma" again, but before I do, I need to stop and remember the many blessings and faithfulnesses (is that a word?) of God through the storm.

1. Protection from major damage.  My husband owns somewhere around 50 different properties here in Jacksonville, which we're very thankful for, but in the face of something like Irma, we realized that we could end up like Job in the matter of a day.  One storm of that magnitude could impoverish us literally overnight.  Praise the Lord, only a few trees fell in yards (not on buildings). The only significant damage was to the roof of his rooming house on Myrtle Ave, which was peeled back sardine-can-style in a tornado. (Since we saw the right side of the hurricane, we were in the tornado alley because of the direction of the wind.) Considering all the properties and the potential for damage, we are thanking God that this was the only major problem!

2.  Protection from flooding in our own house.  The back of our house is about 4.5 feet higher than sea level, and the storm surge was predicted to be 3-5 feet. And did I mention we live on a creek which is fed by the St. Johns River? Do you know, that water came up and touched the back of our house, but did not come in?  (see pics below) Another inch of water, and we would have had a flood in our schoolroom. It made me think of that passage from Job,

 "Or who enclosed the sea with doors
When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;
9 When I made a cloud its garment
And thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 And I [b]placed boundaries on it
And set a bolt and doors,
11 And I said, ‘Thus far you shall come, but no farther;

And here shall your proud waves stop’?"  Job 38:8-11

The water came right up to the back of our house! That wall on the right is the outside of our school room.  We had boarded up the window to protect it from possible flying debris

And this was our back yard!  Our shed (left) was flooded, and normally the grass in our yard extends to just beyond those two forked-looking trees in the background!

3.  Cooler weather after the storm, so the fact that we were without a/c for 3 days was bearable.

4.  Help from neighbors to remove a tree that had fallen from across the street, and was blocking our driveway and the road.  Josh went out there with a chainsaw, and within seconds it seemed, there were 5 neighbors helping us clear the debris so the road was passable again.

5.  Wisdom to see that a tree in our backyard needed to be removed, and that it didn't fall on our house in the storm.  After the storm had passed, Matt and Jen came over to see how we were, and we were all talking in the backyard.  Matt pointed out that the roots around one tree were a little soft.  We had tried to open our shed door earlier in the day, and couldn't because those roots were in the way.  At the time we didn't think any more about it, but when he pointed out the roots were soft, we realized that the whole root ball was coming up, which was why we couldn't open the shed door.  We have a baby swing suspended in that tree, and I noticed it was tilting lower to the ground as well.  That tree was about to fall!  Had it fallen in the storm, it would have hit our house for sure.  God protected us, and allowed us time to see the problem in advance.  Josh and Matt got out a chainsaw and ladder and took down the heaviest part of the tree right then and there.  Now we have some time to get it removed.  What a blessing!