Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:14
Rusty, my boxer mix, and I were heading home from our midday walk when I thought, Lord, You have me in a really good place right now. I feel good; I have wonderful neighbors; and I’m even playing really good golf right now. Thank You, Lord. Life is good.
Then I thought, but life is full of ups and downs, good and bad, and after the sunshine into each life a little rain must fall. I know something is coming. I just don’t know what.
The next evening at dusk, not a little rain, but a huge storm came through. With the sound of a sonic boom, lightning hit my house. Electrical outlets flew out of the wall five feet from where Rusty and I sat and ripped through the house and both garages blowing up almost everything that was plugged in.
In the pouring down rain, three of my neighbors came to see if I was all right. They knew lightning had hit close by because it shook the earth as far as two miles away. They checked every room and both garages for fire and the smell of smoke and offered their homes for us to spend the night. The electric company came and turned off all power to the house but replaced my street-light for safety. When I was assured that nothing was smoldering or on fire, I opted to stay in the house.
While friends asked, “Why did this happen,” I knew that “God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). He knew that He would get the glory from this seeming disaster.
The next morning, my insurance agent spent four hours examining the house, inside and out, plus everything in the yard. His software program pinpointed where the lightning struck: two tall trees in the back yard and the back left corner of my house.
Lightning blew out the floodlight, soffit, and its corner then ran down the downspout and destroyed the foundational bricks. It destroyed my HVAC system, a row of vinyl siding and the foundational wooden frame underneath and ran along the top of my fence and blew up each fence post in its way. It also dismantled the meter on the side of the house and all cables running to the house from the transformer, tore a hole in the second garage roof, and shattered my fly rod.
Remember the wonderful neighbors I mentioned? They brought their generator the following morning and filled it with gas every morning and evening for the four days we were without power. They took the contents of my freezers to theirs so I wouldn’t lose anything. They brought me food and helped in the search for an electrician. And they sat on the porch with me and asked how I could stay so calm when finding an electrician seemed impossible because they were all busy working at the booming Twin Creeks Village.
My response was simple. “God’s got this. He allowed it to happen, and He will fix it. I’m just waiting on the Lord.”
Meanwhile, all of us called the electricians we knew, and we followed every lead. I talked to four on the phone the first day and none had time to come.
Late on the second day, two came to assess the damage. One looked at the power panel and said, “You’re in a mess. It will take a minimum of five days to do all the electrical repair work and probably a month to rewire your house, and I can’t get to it any time soon.” The other one said, “If it were my house, I’d rip out all the sheet rock and rewire the whole house, but I retired and let my license expire.”
Still, we waited. I needed an electrician before we could tell what worked and what didn’t and before the HVAC, TV and Internet people could be called. Meanwhile, Rusty and I camped out in the house with flashlights and battery-powered lanterns.
From my neighbor’s generator, we ran one power cord to my fridge, one of the few things that was still functional, and moved the extra power cord from the microwave to the toaster; but my coffee maker had to be replaced.
On the third day…the restorer of all power appeared at my door and knocked. Oh yes, I invited him in. He was not only an electrician, but a Christian contractor who could oversee all the needed the repairs. That saved me from having to hire individual contractors for each area of work. And he brought his buddy along, a NASA engineer, to consult on the project. They worked till 7:30 that night assessing the damage with their high-tech diagnostic tools and returned at 7:30 the next morning to repair, rewire, and replace all plugs, outlets, and power panel. When God provides, He sends the best.
With electricity restored, my computer guru discovered my desktop’s power supply melted along with the processor and motherboard, but miraculously he retrieved and backed up all data. A month later I’m up and running again with a new desktop.
While most HVAC systems were on backorder and floating on barges in some California harbor, mine was replaced the following week. Comcast rewired the house, replaced the router boxes, and programmed two new TVs.
Brick masons repaired the foundation; roofers replaced the damaged garage roof; the soffit and flood light are replaced; and a new motor for the garage door was installed by specialists who also synced the remotes to my car. The only things left to be replaced or repaired are the downspouts, gutters, and fenceposts.
And once again, life is good, and God has me in a good place.
Lesson Learned: When faith waits, God sends His best.
