Whatever Takes Us Away

It's been many years, I think back in 1985, since I've seen snow like this! Well, in Ohio anyways. While in Northern Illinois we made it through six wonderful winters like this, but there it's a yearly ocurrance. Here in Ohio, snow like this doesn't come as often. I am enjoying this weather.

The one sad part of this weather, my parents' anniversary is today, for some reason I doubt we'll be doing the things we had planned. Tina and I were looking forward to spending time with them, two on two, a little mini-sabbaticle without the kids; home & garden show, dinner, you know, the things adults do without kids. I'm positive about the day anyway, knowing that at some point we will be able to spend time with them today. I am a pleasant optimist and this day will be enjoyable with my parents and their 39th weding anniversary. Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad!

Maybe the kids and I will venture out of doors later, playing in the snow with at least the big dog (Tasha gets lost in the snow drifts). Pictures to follow.

So, for those of you snow bound to your homes, enjoy this time with family, and if at all possible, get out there and throw a snowball at someone!

Well, the first part of my back to school adventure is coming to an end. Two classes will be finished this weekend, giving me a brief respit from exhaustive amounts of reading and lectures. However, the pause will be very brief and in place of the two I gain three classes. Keep me in your prayers. In all likelihood I should have A's in both of these first two classes, unless I somehow get dropped from the system at Liberty. It has been interesting, and I have learned much, I look forward to learning more. I don't know how often I will get to post here, but I will try to keep it going - as long as my head holds up.

This past month marked the second year of this blog for me. Last year I managed to put a post up; a year-in-review, if you will, but this time around, a few days late, I'm getting around to it. This post should have occured February 26th, I missed it by less than one week, not too bad in my world.

So, why did I miss this year? I'm not going to make excuses, but I will try to give the actual, honest, truthful explanations for why I missed writing and posting.

1. You see, in order for you or anyone to read this, it would require the assistance of a computer. Mac, PC, whatever, but the minimum requirement is a personal computer with access to the internet, right? Right. A little more than a month ago I had this problem with my iMac - namely, it died on me. I don't know what caused it, I don't know why it happened, but the Mac crashed - a rare occassion. It took me a couple days, but after running some disk utilities, reinstalling the OS (and buying an external HD backup), the old thing is running like new again. The only problem(s) . . . everything I had, school files, music files, photos, web sites - everything was lost in the process. I missed this anniversary, even the date marked in my iCalendar program was gone.

2. Nature has a way of taking a normal day, adding some wicked strong storms, and wrecking that day all together. Just after the iMac was restored, very high winds came through our little town. Walls ripped in brick walls, trees strewn about the streets, power lines knocked out, and even our 100 year old house was struck. An incredibly large tree (width and girth, not height) took out my shed, hit the back and one corner of the house, and even managed to partially land on the hood of Tina's van. I've been working on the tree removal myself, an hour here, two hours there, I'm somewhere in the vicinity of 12 hours of actual work now. It's a time consuming process, labor intensive process, and a process that requires some measure of weather cooperation (irony).

3. If you haven't noted recently, my posts have been rather sporadic. I'm a college student, cut me some slack!

4. I HAVE FOUR KIDS, cut me some slack.

5. Of all the things happening in my life recently, I think this is the one thing I can stand to ease back on. This doesn't impact my household income. Doesn't have an effect on my family life (though I talk about it).

6. I will have time to catch up on this . . . I know God has a plan for me, and that plan requires time (God has plenty of that, we share very little of that), and I have a feeling He will keep me around long enough to share that journey, even in this form.

7. I'm adjusting to this whole Vista thing. Lord, I just want to pray for those that work at Microsoft, that one day you will give them the ability to make something easy to use like the wonderful people at Apple. Amen.

God can work miracles, I more than believe this to be true.

Yes, God, the One who controls the weather, even the extreme bad weather, works miracles through the bad times. Very early this morning my wife and I experienced extreme weather and God’s awesome hand.

The city sirens sounded, the power was cut, and the wind howled louder than I’ve ever heard; something horrible was about to happen. And it did. The sound of the wind rushing grew louder with each passing moment. As I ran through the house lighting candles I noticed flashing lights out the kitchen window. I looked, but with the power outage I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Upon closer inspection for our upstairs bedroom I could tell that at least one of our trees had fallen into the street, taking with it a power line. I popped my head out the door once the winds had subsided, only to look in horror as two, three, four trees in our yard had fallen prey to the weather.


Part of the tallest tree had broken from the top, taken out our 20 foot blue spruce, which had landed in the street with the power line. Another tree in the back yard fell towards, but not on the house. But the worst of them was the one directly off the back porch. By far this tree was the largest, not necessarily the tallest, but the girth of this tree is astonishing. Half of the tree had split, falling on our shed, back part of the house and on Tina’s van parked in the driveway. Here is where God’s hand of mercy and blessing were displayed for us. The shed took most of the weight of this might tree, sparing both our roof and Tina’s van. Some minor damage to the back corner of the house, the downspout and a few shingles, but nothing major. Tina’s van has one good sized dent and a few other scratches, but everything works.

My dad and I cleared everything from the shed, van and house this afternoon, but I still have much work to do with clearing the rest of the debris – I should be done clearing by this time next week!

At any rate, I thank God for keeping watch over my four kids, my wife, my house and even me. And I think I’m taking this all pretty well, and I know it’s my faith that is keeping me together; God is amazing, even in the worst of our storms.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I've been a little busy . . .

For starters I'm getting back to college! I start next week and have 18 credit hours my first semester. Thankfully everything is online, I have no where to go other than out of my bed! I've got a small bookshelf already filled with books. It's amazing how much stuff I have to read; guess it's a good thing I like to read.

Secondly, we've decided (Tina and I) to remodel the kitchen and laundry rooms in the house. All new appliances have been ordered, cabinets and counter tops will be ordered within the next couple weeks, wall colors have been chosen and we hope this all will make things a little less cluttered around the homestead. Pray for us as we begin demolition and rebuild!

We had a great Christmas, time spent with family and friends, gifts exchanged, etc. Looking forward to taking down decorations this week!

I also managed to harvest my second dear in December. There's lots more I could fill you in on, but I'll leave it at that for now.

House, school, youth group, children's church, work - I'm sure something will come up that I'll post about in the near future. Until then . . .