What I didn't think about was that I was doing it without another adult in the house. You can pass a lot of time with adult conversation.
Things started out great, we got home late Thursday, Friday I ran to the store before the rain was supposed to hit. Lunch came and still no rain. Afternoon - no rain. This fun little storm was sucking all the moisture it could get and slowly (very slowly) turning into a Cat 1 Hurricane in the Gulf.
Cue all the eye rolls.
But whatever, we were good. The windows at this apartment surely wouldn't bust because there wasn't a huge chance for flying debris. Plus all our electrical cables are underground... just not the part that supplied us.
I spent the day watching the news online and seeing everything starting to build. Slowly people were reporting power outages.
Then out power began flickering.
Finally that evening it went out, right about the time the city had announced that no vehicles were allowed on the roads aside from emergency personnel.
What I should have done was scooped the kids up and went to a hotel in Lafayette, they really didn't get the wind we had.
Instead the sudden cut off from my Lafayette Mom friends that had been chatting all day in our group was suddenly cut off. My only response... I cried. I stood at the window and sobbed.
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| This was Sunday or Monday, Super 1 was passing out cases of water and ice to residents. This part of town still didn't have electricity for traffic lights. |
Y'all we had zero damage, I live in a area that doesn't flood. But the prospect of toughing out the outage with a driving ban for who knows how long was just too much to bare after a week of my husband being out of the country.
About that time a friend called asking if we needed anything. In my absolute panic mode I couldn't cover my feelings as well as usual and I busted out crying to her.
Immediately she sent her father-in-law and husband out to rescue us and was so nice to let us stay with them until the power was restored to our area. That evening another friend asked how we were and offered to let the kids play at her house during the day, so we took her up on that offer.
Y'all I've never been more thankful for friends/church family. The heat in our house didn't get warmer than 74 degrees so we could have really toughed it out here fine. What I was really in need of was adult conversation and friendship and that's exactly what was delivered.
I'll say something else too, I had to learn to let go of many thing and allow myself to accept help. I was hard and I probably annoyed all of my hosts with my reluctance to be helped. My personality is to do for others, help, clean, organize. If you need something I'm there. What I don't do well is have other's do for me.
That was a big lesson God taught me. I had to let go and accept help. I couldn't do it myself.
I might have a huge bruise on my legs from fighting a window unit that weighed somewhere over 50lbs. I had to though, it was on top of the camping tubs and I needed the lanterns and flashlights that were stuck in there. I probably yelled at that unit for 15 minutes as I lifted it from above my head to right back in its place above me again. I should have asked for help but didn't.
I can be very pig headed and do it all myself. And to an extent the physical things I can do. It was when the emotional hit that I was done for. I hadn't sat in front of another adult in days and just needed someone else to talk to, so what was a small problem felt very huge.
I don't know how well this post followed a timeline but that was our weekend, a slow moving hurricane, a loss of power, realizing I had to accept help in my loneliness, and bruised knees because I'm too stubborn.
Thank the Lord that our power was restored in 24 hours and we really didn't lose much food. My smoothie bananas had seen better days but many people experience actual loss to property.
