When we left for vacation in Montana a week and a half ago (the reason I haven’t posted in awhile), I was just at the point of feeling somewhat organized in our new home. “We’ll even come back to a clean kitchen,” I told Dave as we drove away from West Chicago. “But I didn’t get to the dining room. I really wanted to sweep under the table.”

This morning, as I swept the dining room, putting window glass broken by Sunday’s storm into a plastic bucket, I remembered saying that–and I laughed.

When I told Dave, he laughed, too. “And to think that I thought I HAD to mow the back lawn so the neighbors wouldn’t be appalled by the height of the grass.”

We were driving back home, still in the middle of Minnesota, when my friend Kristine called. “Jen, there’s been a bad storm. I’m going to check out your house in a few minutes. Mine’s fine, just no power.”

A few minutes later a neighbor called Dave and shared the news: several trees down in our yard; one window completely broken by a limb; the back porch roof smushed; maybe some roof damage; no power–and that was probably out for several days.

The good news: our kind neighbors had already pulled the tree limb from the window and tarped it in case more storms were coming.

We drove into West Chicago about eight that night. The park down the street from our house looked like someone had bombed the trees. Later we learned that about 80 trees were split or downed.

Our front yard didn’t look a whole lot different. “I was trying to imagine the worst,” said Dave, “but this is crazy!”

When we walked around the corner of the house, we saw the huge tree from our neighbor’s yard lying on our back porch roof–just a few feet from the corner of the house. If the wind had been from a slightly different direction or twisted the tree just a little differently… “This could have been so much worse,” we told each other.

We’ve had so many things to be thankful for during the past couple of days, and it’s a joy to share them:

-within two hours of being back in West Chicago, we were comfortably settled in our friends’ air-conditioned, lighted home. Thank you, Vishanoffs.

-we’ve met and talked with one neighbor after another in the past couple of days. We’re praying for genuine conversations, open doors, and deepening friendships.

-this morning 39 Wheaton Academy football players showed up and cleared amazing amounts of debris. I was inside sweeping glass from the dining room when Dave came in, choked up with tears. “Have you SEEN how much they’ve done, Jen? It’s amazing!” Not only were we blessed and encouraged, our neighbors noticed.

-and God has continued to provide joy and perspective: we have several people in our neighborhood who have tarps fastened over large holes in their roofs–and yesterday morning I happened to look at a National Geographic article about the perennially flooded people of Bangladesh, who accept what we consider tragedy as normal life. That puts our temporary inconvenience–to what is only temporal

anyway–in great perspective.

I’ll write more about the trip to Montana later this week.

Thanks for reading.

Jen