Sandy

The Lord has been very good to me.

Despite being blown around like a rag doll, soaked to the very bone, and pelted with rain and sleet by Sandy and her unforgiving wrath, my home, my trees, my cars and most importantly my family are all no worse for the wear.

Make no mistake about it. This was the Lord's doing.

Not dumb luck.

Not storm degradation.

Not just a sturdy house.

This was the Lord's doing. Period.

All around us there are trees that have fallen. Our next door neighbor had a relatively tall one fall in his yard (thankfully, not on his house). He was out there yesterday with his yard crew cutting it up and hauling it away.

Along my way to work this morning I saw a lot of trees that had been felled by Sandy's icy, uncaring hand. Shingles ripped from roofs. Streams terribly overflowing their banks. Debris littering the roads. Even a car or two stuck in the mud she left behind.

But we are fine.

Don't misunderstand. We were not totally spared. A leak in our living room window allowed quite a bit of water to seep in and get into the carpet. Thankfully, Jacob spotted it before it could do any damage to our computers, which sit right next that window. We laid plastic garbage bags down on the floor and then spread some towels over those in the particularly wet areas.

I went outside during the height of the storm and tried to stem the tide, so to speak, by putting some silicone caulking around the trim. It seemed to help a little, but I was freezing cold, caked with caulking and soaked to the bone.

But that was it. Literally. No other damage whatsoever.

With 60+ mph sustained winds, 80+ mph gusts and four and a half inches of rain at my house, you'd have thought there would be something more drastic.

A flooded basement.

A downed tree.

A cut or a scrape, maybe.

But no. Nothing but an easily remedied leak in a window, while all around us there was damage beyond belief costing in the tens of billions of dollars.

Why? I don't know. But what I do know is that it was the Lord that spared us.

There were times during the storm when I thought the house was going to blow off of its foundation. I thought for sure that one of our giant oaks in the backyard was

going to blow over on our house, or on one of our neighbors. I could vividly imagine our basement being flooded and having to spend thousands of dollars to get it cleaned up and repaired.

But as awful as it all was, a new day dawned (beautifully, see picture at left), the house is still standing, we are all fine, and we are still VERY blessed of the Lord.

All I can say is "Thank You."

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