Power Outage Experience

Last week we experienced a power outage.  The outage lasted about 40 hours due to a crazy ice storm.  This brought back so many memories from the ice storm we last suffered in 2004 or 2005.

Seth and I were dating back then.  I remember the ice was terrible...the damage to the trees was unmatched by anything I had ever experienced.  The high school shut down for that entire week if I remember correctly.  My mom's house kept power the entire time.  Seth's house did not.  I think their power was out for 7 days or so.  Their house was freezing.  I didn't venture out that week.  I stayed home the entire time, and I was grateful that I was warm!

During the storm we had last week, the power went out at about 10:30 pm.  Two days later at 2:00 pm it was restored.  But those two days were so hard.  The first night wasn't that bad as it only dropped a couple of degrees by the time we got to sleep.  The next morning we woke up to 59 degrees.  It was starting to get chilly, and I didn't want to stay at home for the day especially since I am pregnant (my work was closed).  So I ventured to work with Seth.  Stayed there in the showroom while he worked for 11 and 1/2 hours.  Wow...kind of boring.  But the worst part about it was being stressed about what we were going to do that night for accommodations and feeling like the power company should just have it fixed already.  We were just hoping that the power would be back on by the time we got home because we have cats to think about that hotels would not allow to stay.  Also, if the power was off longer than expected, we would have to think about staying in one for several nights, and we didn't want to spend that money.  So...we decided to stay yet another night in the cold house.  It was 49 degrees when we went to sleep.  We woke up to 44 degrees.  That was COLD!  Thankfully that day was the day the power was restored, and we had a warm place to sleep that night.

The craziest thing about the whole experience was realizing how fortunate I am to even have power.  It was a humbling experience.  I found out that I take power, clean water etc for granted when I didn't think that I did.  Our house church just went through a series called Radical, and this experience just solidified some of the things I learned through it. I am learning to be grateful for these USA norms more and more each day!  I am also remembering to pray now more than ever for those people who don't have these things.  How strong they are...or maybe they just do a better job of relying on the Lord than I do!