Storms and Blessings

I should have known better since I had lived in Wisconsin for over 30 years and grew up in Michigan. As the ice and  freezing rain began to fall upon Texas, I thought to myself, "I should have been more prepared!"  And at that moment my electricity went out. I stared down at my phone that had less than 5% battery. I did a little mental checklist of my refrigerator and cupboards which were not quite bare, but there was not much in them. Thankfully I was able to head to my car, warm it up, and charge my phone. I did have a gas stove- much to my chagrin when I was house hunting. (I definitely did not want a gas stove. In my experience gas stoves were equivalent to burnt meals.) Over the past few years I have learned to cook with gas and that stormy day with no electricity, I was very thankful for a gas stove.

Storm one left us with nine hours of no electricity, a cold house, and many tree limbs downed from our beautiful live oak trees. Once the power was back on, our poor puny Texas furnace could barely warm our house above 62°. Storms two, three, and four left many people without power- either for several days or for hours during rolling power outages. Most nearby localities were either completely without water or had boil water orders.

Between storm two and three, with our 2002 four-wheel-drive suburban (in Texas, the streets are NOT plowed), we checked on some people without water and electricity and brought them to our house to share the warmth and water. Bill Woosley, founder and president of FiveTwo Network, talks about lessons from the parable "The Feeding of the 5000" Mark 6:30-44. A couple lessons were "abundance from scarcity" and "miracles from the mundane".

Our miracles and abundance included: Other than the first storm, our house maintained both power and water. (When we found out later how our community kept our water supply during the storm, we were amazed.) Somehow our food just seemed to keep stretching even as more and more people joined us in our "powered and watered" home. During this time we were so richly blessed with special relationships! We had a house full of people and laughter, story telling, game playing, Bible reading, and so much more. Next time I will hopefully be more prepared for the winter storms in Texas, But in the meantime I thank God for using this time to shower us with
the incredible blessings of water, power, and people and the very special memories created during this time! 

Where in your life do you see abundance from scarcity or miracles from the mundane? 

GTT Day 1 What? No Gas

After an exciting weekend of Big 10 college football game, water ski tournament, and Room 211 Church, we dropped Daniel at the dorm about 8:15 A.M. and headed south!

Suburban School: A very long and diligent day! 8:15 A.M. to 10:15 P.M. Sam studied Kingdom Monera, plasmid, etc in Biology, worked Algebra 2 problems, and outlined his HERO paper. (Yes, that is actually his Classical Conversations writing assignment scheduled this week. Timely.) Together we listened to "Sir Gawin and the Green Knight". The headless, bleeding green knight holding in his hand his own head by his long hair...Caught me off guard. Gruesome.

What? No Gas.  Great trip driving through our beautiful country so lush & green. NE, KS, OK, TX. We stopped for gas along I-35 south of Waco, TX. Sam commented, "Interesting that the lights on the sign are off." Turns out, "No gas." As the station owner declared, "This is NOT a supply problem. This is a demand problem. Everyone is buying extra gas because they are worried gas is going to run out.  But if everyone just bought their usual amount of gas, there would be plenty." On we traveled. (Being a somewhat prudent woman, I fill up my tank long before I'm running on fumes, so I still had gas.) As we drove into Pflugerville, an Austin suburb, we searched again for gas, being successful at 7-11. But we drove by several stations that were out of gas. We will get to Houston! Will we find gas to get home? Will we have enough gas to evacuate Houston if Irma changes course and heads to Houston?

Housing: Late in the afternoon, we were ecstatic to get a welcoming call from our host family. Until then we were unsure of exactly what our sleeping quarters were going to be in Houston, and anticipated that it might be a shelter type condition. (Am I getting too old to sleep on a cot in a room with many other people? Well, I won't have to find out this week, thanks to our host family.) The comment she made to me on the phone, "You will be dismayed by the destruction you see, but you will be so uplifted by all the people who are responding with help."

We are mostly excited and a little bit nervous...more later!

Thanking God for:
we actually made it here!!
all the plans came together for us to serve
safe travels
beautiful country
delightful day of learning
beds! (at my brother's home in Pflugerville, our host in Houston)
gas
people who encouraged me to just do this
AND SO MUCH MORE

Exercising, Eating, Stewardship, Lent...How are these related?

Four sons...Cars. Cars. Cars. Cars. A common topic at our house.  Throw in some beach walks contemplating stewardship combined with hearing an excellent sermon and here is what happened:

Exercising, Eating, Stewardship, Lent...How are these related?

My friend bought an old, but low mileage, cute Volkswagen Bug. But this car had sat. Almost immediately, the car’s fuel pump failed. Next the water pump failed. Soon the belts failed. And so on. Our bodies are very much like that little Bug. If we don’t use them, we lose them, so to speak.
Continue reading here:
http://blog.cph.org/everyday-faith/exercising-eating-stewardship-lent-related/

This article first appeared March 9, 2017 on the CPH Blog