There is little out there more trying on the patience of a person than preparing for a hurricane. In the week to ten days prior to the event, you are watching forecasts, being told how big the storm is, how destructive it is. There’s the dizzying array of “spaghetti models” showing the storm going one way, then another, and another.
At first, Hurricane Irma was going to hit New York. Be another Sandy. Then, it shifted. The people of the Carolinas took notice. Yet again, it shifted. East coast of Florida. West coast of Florida. Then, right up the middle of the state.
During this time, people started to panic as Irma became the most publicized, advertised, and glamorized storm of all time. An estimated five million people headed north. For those who stayed, generators disappeared. Gasoline disappeared. Store shelves looked like Looter Central. I laughed when I went to our local store two days before the storm hit. Even when supplies are scarce, there were kinds of bread and certain types of paper goods nobody apparently wanted. A First-World problem, for sure.
But once you are as prepared as you can be, you still have to live through the storm. Bands of rains influenced by Irma swept across our area Saturday evening, Sept. 10. The outer bands got here on Sunday. By Sunday night, the winds picked up with gusts of 50-60 mph. The power went out at 1:23 a.m., ninety minutes before the eye plowed directly over our area.
By late Monday morning, the winds were still gusty, but the threats were gone, or so we thought. A fifty-foot oak tree that was already leaning toward our house had shifted at least two feet more, and the roots had uprooted partially. This was in addition to a shattered kitchen window suffered during the peak of the storm and what I estimate is 15-20 pick-up truck loads of debris scattered across our yard.
Our power remained off until Wednesday afternoon while heat indexes of 102 plagued our area.
Now (Saturday, Sept. 16), we’re getting back to normal. The Leaning Tree of Lake Thompson is gone. Tree service took it down Wednesday. About 60 percent of the debris is picked up and stacked out by the road, but I’m running out of lot frontage. The piles range from five to eight feet high and are anywhere from four to ten feet wide. FEMA trucks will pick it all up in about a month or two.
Oh, the window is fixed, too.
But one thing that still needs repair is my writing schedule. I’m a good 10,000 words behind, and finding time to be creative is at a premium right now. Especially when you are physically and emotionally drained. (And yet, we didn’t suffer anything like the folks in south Florida—Naples area—or those in Houston. Please pray for those affected.)
But like everything that is important, I’ll find the time. Somehow. Some way. I’ll figure out how to up my word count some days until I’m back on track. Why? Because that’s what writers do. They write. Even if it is only ten words.
And it will probably be awhile before I complain about all the usual, minor things I complain about that get in my way.
It’s amazing how life-changing events help to refocus our lives.
Maybe that’s why God allows them to happen.
To see this article on the Seriously Write website,
click on the following link: Click HERE!
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