When Lightning Strikes

Yesterday afternoon I had Bible study at Panera with my bestest friends! It was fabulous, we discussed the Psalms and our lives and shared prayer requests. Then I went and ordered some food to go, because I hadn't been feeling well and didn't want to make dinner.

As I waited for my order to be completed, I started noticing the changes outside. Within the 10 minutes it took for Panera Bread Company to make my dinner, the sunny skies became very very dark and the wind was BLOWING!! I mean the front doors wouldn't stay closed and you could see trees bending down to touch the ground!

So I quickly ran to the car and started driving home. By the time I got on the road, the rain started. and it was a downpour!! There was no warning. No sprinkles. No drizzles. The skies just flat out opened up and the rains came down!

So tired, exhausted, sick me drove like a grandma all the way home. The 15 minute trip took about 30. It was bad.

I came home, used 2 umbrellas to cover all my school bags, purse, dinner, and self. Ran inside and walked around the house to make sure everything was okay.

Then I went into the back sun room. And out of the windows, all I could see was leaves and branches. Those are not supposed to be there.

So I went out on the deck, even though it was raining to see a massive branch had fallen.... right on top of our POWER LINE and CABLE LINE!!

I ran around the house to check our power, all was fine. Then I held my breath to check the cable... I mean a new episode of The Office was about to come on. No problem, it worked too.

So I grabbed an umbrella and my camera and went and took some pictures in the down pour.

Notice our power lines coming out from under the branches on the left. You can also see in the bottom of this picture the railing of our deck. Yes, the branches were so big that they were higher than the deck railing.

more power lines going straight through a thousand branches

This pole on top of our garage is where the lines connect to the house. The pole USED to go straight up, it now is bent out at a slight angle. Fortunately there was no damage to our roof.

Oh man- this is bad.

Here is the whole thing. You can't get a good perspective of the size from this picture, but when 2 strong men tried to lift the branches off the lines- they couldn't, it was too heavy.

Here's where it snapped off. I actually don't know if lightning hit or it was just the strong winds. But the title "when lightning strikes" sounds better than, "i don't know what caused this problem."

Ty's dad lives for this "excitement." After dinner, he came over with a friend (who wore an orange reflective vest and a hard hat, as a joke, I think.). They "assessed" the situation. And then in "true man style" determined they needed to go to Home Depot to purchase some new saws. Within minutes, the tree branches were cut to smaller, more manageable sizes and removed from our power lines.

And we got to watch The Office after all.