Monday night Susan and I realized that we were going to be dealing with a nasty Wednesday and Thursday in regard to the hurricane. We decided to go ahead and put gas in both of our cars and pick up many items to eat assuming things were bad and we lost power and water. As we prepared we saw people running scared, people were crazy. I have never seen people in the store acting like they were. Target was an interesting place, to say the least. We decided not to try and board up our house because our house is so high and there are so many windows we just felt like the cost and the time and effort might not be worth it ( I know that sounds crazy, but in the light of finding enough supplies, the time it would take to find them and put it on the house, we would probably be doing it still today, especially since it wouldn't matter if one of the many trees happened to fall on our house) So, we decided to get ready and hope for the best.
Tuesday was a very difficult day for Susan and I. I got up a lot earlier that morning than I typically would have. Susan and I were extremely focused on being prepared for the hurricane. She had to go ahead and go to school and spend time preparing until noon that day, so I kept Hayden with me and we did a few more errands. I decided about ten o'clock Tuesday morning after talking with a few people around us that Susan and I needed to forget about staying in town, when she got home around 12:30 she agreed, we began to pack and put away as much of our stuff as possible. We wrapped things and put them into dresser drawers, moved our valuables - mainly pictures and other items - in to a downstairs closet underneath the stairwell. As soon as we were finished we packed up some clothes and important things and hit the road. We were headed to West Monroe, LA. I guess we left home at about 4:20 it was rough, I have never seen traffic like this in my life, thankfully we thought to bring a few DVD's and we just watched movie after movie as we crawled through Alabama and Mississippi. We finally got into West Monroe at 2:00AM I couldn't believe it had taken us 10 hours.
We were exhausted when we got to town, we came in and stayed with some family and we were glad to see them, just not on the circumstances. Susan and I spent Wednesday just hanging around at the mall and WalMart stocking up on extra supplies for when we got home, faced with the fact that we might have nothing left when we got back. I would say that both of us spent the day and night quite prayerful, not that we aren't already prayerful people, but I guess we both felt like we were in continual prayer that day, A day long conversation with God. The whole thing was difficult to think about.
We tried to get ready for the night. Susan and Hayden went to bed, but I couldn't. I stayed up trying to keep and eye on the storm and just continually letting it all go. I finally went to bed. When I got up we had heard that basically our area was spared. I talked to one of our neighbors who rode it out. She said that from what she could tell we had no damage. GOD IS GOOD!!! We are leaving this morning to go home and find out what issues we do have, I will update then.
Thank you so much to all of you who prayed for us and our families, church, and community. It appears that overall Mobile was spared, PLEASE BE IN PRAYER FOR THE SURROUNDING AREAS. Others did not fare as well as we did. We are just thankful that we are all safe. God bless!
Jason Retherford said...
Brother,
My heart aches for those who had to endure this violent storm. I am glad that your home and the Mobile area were spared. I pray that you continue to find strength in Christ as you work through this ordeal.
JD said...
Chris...glad you guys are ok. Good thinking on leaving town ... bad timing...but it worked out. We did pretty well on our journey to N Mississippi, but we took backroads ... except for the hour it took us to get around H'burg!
Have a safe trip home.
Travis said...
Chris,
Glad you made it through the storm okay. My parents are east of you in Niceville, FL. The storm hit bad there and in Ft. Walton Beach which is right next to Niceville. They did not receive any bad damage though. I hope at least some of the beautiful Sand Dunes survived the storm.
