September 15 – “A long night from a long way”

Well, I didn’t sleep very much.  I watched some of the Astros game, but that wasn’t what did it.  I turned it off while they were winning 12 or 13 to 1.  Well on there way to a 15-1 final victory, so I turned the light off around 10.  Chris had been asleep for a long time already. 

 

I woke up around 12:30.  Seemed like I just had to check on the progress of the now Hurricane Nicholas.  Dozed off and woke again at 1:30.  That process continued throughout the night.  And each time I checked the storm’s current position.  And each time Galveston was on the dirty side.  The Island was getting hit with 68 miles per hour gusts and 60 miles per hour sustained winds.  Not the full brunt of hurricane force, but enough to do some damage.

 

Hurricane Nichlolas hit land as a full category one hurricane.  It left much of the Island without power from the gusty winds knocking out power lines.  Around 3:30 a.m. I saw on my fire department app that our next door neighbor called 911 to report that her back yard was on fire.  Great.  The fire guys were running continuously all night long.  I waited until around 6 a.m. and then texted the Geran’s.  They went across the street to check things out, but in spite of the typical, world-is-coming-to-an-end reports we were hearing, our street never flooded and we all still had power.  And our backyard hadn’t burned down.  We did have a big branch of our sycamore tree break in the wind.  It was hanging precariously over the bed of our truck, but didn’t appear to be endangering anything.

 

Later I texted several church members to check on them.  Most of them had no power, but other than that, all was well.  The church sign was knocked over, so Ed went by and disconnected the electricity to it.  Lauren stopped by and took several pictures of other damage to the exterior of the building.  Not sure about the inside yet.  She also said we probably need to have a workday to clean up all the debris on the property.  All in all, though, things were not nearly as bad as they could have been.  And I have already received several calls from folks offering help.  Even a guy from the Texas Baptist group that is putting on this convention called.  It just seemed so strange that we missed all the excitement … accidentally.

 

1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

 

Father, we do thank you that Galveston was spared a much worse fate.  Help us now as we start the clean-up and repair work.  Amen.