The Summer of 2024 . . . a wild ride

I’m typing this in mid-October, and Hurricane Milton is still on every Floridian’s mind . . . much the same as Hurricane Helene is still the talk of North Carolina. Helene hit us hard, too, but most of its damage was to the beach homes along the western coast. Those of us who were inland during Helene chalked it up as a windy thunderstorm, but those along the beach literally had to dig tons of sands from their homes and roads. Even my messianic synagogue, which is inland, sits across from Tampa Bay, and had a foot of water in the building. We have no flood insurance, so we’re having to rely on the prayers and kindness of strangers to put things to rights.

Milton was a different story. Apparently if a storm comes in NORTH of us, we get storm surge (seawater and sand). If it comes in SOUTH, we get tons of rain. Milton came in south, and the weather casters predicted that it would rain from Sunday evening until the storm’s landfall sometime on Thursday. It didn’t start raining until Thursday, thank the Lord, but we ended up getting 14 inches.

God blessed us. The category five storm had “calmed” to a cat three by the time it came ashore in the Sarasota area, but we still got lots of wind and rain–just not the rip-your-roof-off kind (I’m not complaining.) People along the beach and in mobile homes were required to evacuate, and the governor kept saying, “If you’re in a well-built home and not in an evacuation area, stay put.” We are not in an evacuation area, but we are in a flood zone, and I wasn’t sure our house could qualify for “well-built.” It’s older, wooden, and quirky.

But my hubby wanted to stay, and I didn’t want to leave our dogs, so we stayed. By Wednesday afternoon the winds had picked up, and they had barely begun to blow when we heard a loud noise. We ran into our bedroom and saw that a HUGE oak branch had fallen, pierced our interlocking polycarbonate panels, and actually touched the glass on my four-sided glass garden window . . . but the glass didn’t break. But the water was rising, and our vinyl floor began to sweat–because outside, the water had come up as high as the plywood floor over the crawlspace.

So, since we were surrounded by trees and rising water, we decided to sleep under the dining room table. Our three dogs sat and stared down at us, unable to figure out what kind of weird game we were playing. At about 10:30, Jazzy decided that she HAD to go outside, so i let her out and she prowled the deck, whining. She doesn’t like water, and the water was as high as our deck, but finally she decided to jump into an elevated flower bed. While she went potty, I watched the trees bend and dance and flail while little bunches of leaves rained down on me. A strange aqua-blue lightning kept lighting the sky–never have seen anything like it before, but afterward, I saw it in a video a reporter made during the storm.

Finally Jazzy came back into the house (after wading through chest-deep water), and we actually went to sleep.

The next morning, I was SURE there would be water in our garage and my office, but those places were dry. Our driveway had been washed clean by water running downhill to the creek behind our house, and so much debris had washed down that our fence was knocked over by the weight of it all.

We’ve spent the last two weeks cleaning up. We had two trees down and all kinds of branches, but we had no other damage–God was so good. So many others were without power for days, and that’s not easy. We had power, but I didn’t have Internet, which reminds me of how dependent we become on the gadgets we use every day. Sometimes I wish we had more of that pioneer spirit . . . then I remember that in the last days, people will need that spirit just to survive.

Thank you for praying for those who were in the path of the storm. I was stiff and sore for a few days afterward (not used to all that bending and pulling and sawing and hauling), but that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? And God was faithful, in ways large and small. One tree fell and blocked our driveway (and the road!). But a policeman who was patrolling the area and assessing the damage drove by, got stuck in our neighbor’s wet lawn, and had to call for someone to pull him out. Because of that, the police cut up that tree and hauled it away first thing! And all that water surrounding our house was gone by sunrise.

So thank you for praying, and let’s remember to keep praying for those who lost everything in Helene and Milton. These things have a way of reminding us of what’s really important–God, life, and family. Everything else is just stuff.

~~Angie