Opportunities to trust God!

Well, anyone who lives in the Minneapolis area is aware of the nasty thunderstorm activity we had on Thursday around lunchtime. I had just put the boys down for a nap when it started moving in. The sky blackened and the rain came down in buckets...and then the wind picked up. Oh my. I have never seen it blow so hard—there was so much rain and such strong wind, I could just barely see the houses across the street through the white sheets of rain.

As I was looking out the kitchen window, all of a sudden there was a loud crunching noise...as a HUGE tree branch from our Maple fell onto the roof of our garage...also leaning on the power line that runs from the tall wooden pole in the corner of our lot to the mast on the roof of our house. In fact, the pressure on the power line from the limb is so great, it actually bent the mast and pulled up the shingles around it. Yikes!

So I called Xcel Energy. The lady said they would come out "tonight" to take care of it. Well...I'm sure she meant "as soon as possible" since it was 5:30 p.m. when I called, and no one came that evening. The orange Asplundh truck (the tree trimmer guys) pulled up on Friday morning around 10:00 a.m. Two men assessed the situation in our backyard and the main dude told me, "Nope. We can't touch it." Huh? Well, apparently they just had a new rule put in place, that if the mast on the house is bent (i.e. damaged) they are not allowed to cut down the branches... because if there was further damage to the mast, it could cause a house fire. Oh, that's great news! I was proud of myself for not wigging-out on the guy. With composure I asked him, "I understand you don't want that liability. So where do we go from here?" He said I needed to call Xcel to have one of their electricians come out and do a 'line drop'—that is, to drop the power line from the pole. THEN they'd come back and do their work, and THEN Xcel would have to come back and hook the power line back up.

So I called Xcel and got a work order put in. I was kinda hoping they'd get it taken care of before the next line of storms rolled in...on Friday night. I found myself fretting on Friday afternoon about the possibility of tornadoes or our house starting on fire. But I chose to turn it over to God (as best I could!) by speaking His truths out loud: "God, I know that everything that happens to us passes through Your hands—nothing is an accident. I have no control over this, but I trust You—our future is in Your hands!" And He gave me peace. Every time fear started to creep into my mind, I'd pray a similar prayer aloud again.

The cool thing—the storms that went through our area on Friday night amounted to little more than heavy rain! No wind or tornadoes! So I was thanking and praising God over and over!! Just think how much energy I could have wasted (and an opportunity to strengthen my faith) if I had just worried and not chosen to cling to Him! [As a side note, I STILL would have clung to Him and trusted Him if something bad had happened.]

So now it's Saturday afternoon...and the tree limb is still hanging off the garage and pulling on the power line. And it's really quite gusty right now...so I'm hoping nothing gets damaged while we wait... Trust, trust, trust...

P.S. My spell-checker flagged "tornados" and suggested "tornadoes"—like the plural of potato... that looks weird to me...