Lightning Crashes

My favorite blogger, P-Dub, says you should blog like you are talking to your sister.  I love that.  I don’t have a sister, but I always wanted one.  This is a story I would tell my sister, a friend or the person in front of me at Wal-Mart.

The morning started off great.  At 5:45 am, I was on the treadmill and ready for a great workout.  Home by 6:30 am, the kids morning routine would be no sweat.  At 7:45 am, I was perched in front of a dozen Pre-K kids giving their teacher some time off in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week.  Fifteen minutes later, I was relieved of my duties one-hour shy of my original end time.  It was nothing against me, the kids were starting their day in the computer lab.  My visions of wide-eyed Pre-K kids gazing up at me as I read them enchanting children’s stories I dug out of my daughter’s closet the night before quickly vanished.

Actually, I was relieved.  Work demands called, and I was feeling the pressure.  At 8:20 am, I was in my home office working diligently on a large project that had been on the back burner due to other pressing matters.

At approximately 10 am, my whole body recoiled as I experienced the loudest sound I have ever physically endured.  My body shook and my ears rang as I tried to process what happened.  I opened my eyes and looked around to see if the world was still turning and witnessed large chunks of sparks flying off the power lines draped above my neighbor’s backyard.

Lightning had struck the transformer behind our home about 20 yards from where I sat.  I would learn that in the next few minutes.  Immediately after the shock of the boom, I screamed.  Literally.  I’m not a screamer, but I vocalized my fear in a way much like someone who had just learned their loved one had just died.

Zapped transformer

Panic stricken, I ran away from my office area and, thankfully, my husband was there to grab me and hold me tightly and say exactly what I needed to hear to calm me down, if just for a moment.  After checking out the damage and seeing about our neighbor and a lot of deep breathing, the adrenalin rush subsided.

Faced with no power for several hours, I packed up my computer and headed to my favorite, local coffee shop.  Working from a coffee shop would be fun, I told myself.  And, volunteering for a few brief minutes that morning had paid off.  I had make up on and looked acceptable for working in public.

Time to get to work.  I opened my laptop and pushed the start button and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Thirty seconds later -- patience is not a virtue I possess -- I called my husband a/k/a Computer Technician Extraordinaire to explain what my computer wasn’t doing.  I tried his recommendations to no avail and started to experience  the panic stricken feeling rising up in me all over again. Our IT department confirmed my fears.  My work-issued laptop was fried.  Awesome.

I thrive on finding solutions to problems in crisis situations, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I wanted to crawl back into bed at that moment and have a complete do-over.  If my computer was fried, what other dead appliances awaited us when the power was restored?  Insurance deductibles and long hold times started swirling around in my head.  I struggled to stay focused on finding a way to meet my impending work demands.

Finally, action items and to-do lists started to churn in my brain.  I called our IT department and asked for a new computer to be set up for me and shipped to our Dallas office.  I would drive there the next day to pick it up.  I would be working in our headquarter office the following week and could work out any issues.  I emailed my team and let them know about my technology challenges.  I called my assistant and walked her through a few projects she could help pick up for me.  I answered emails on my iPhone and set up my remote working software on my iPad mini that I had brought with me.

I went to lunch and tried to forget about the last two hours.  Our power would most likely be back on after lunch, and I could continue working from home.  The house was dark when we arrived after lunch.  My brilliant husband checked the breaker box and voila, power restored!  I held my breath as we tested each appliance and piece of technology.  It appears that the only items damaged were the guest room TV, a DVD player, the guest room cable box, our internet router and, of course, my laptop.

The day continued to have challenges but whining and complaining about them now feels pointless and futile.  Even in the thick of the stress and  the mess of that day, I still managed to have a Pollyanna-like voice in my head saying, “It could be worse.  I could have been outside when the lightning hit.  I could have not been able to go to Dallas the next day to get my new computer.  I could be suffering from a terminal disease. I could be jobless.  There are so many worse things that I could be coping with.”

As evening approached, I decided to focus on one thing I could control: my hair color.  Dying my hair darker had been on my to-do list for several weeks as evidenced by the unopened box of hair dye on my bathroom counter.  Dying my hair that night proved cathartic and distracted me into concentrating on something that I could do something about.

Lightning crashed and even though my life felt as if it was falling apart around me, I stayed focused on God and His promises.  The storms of life can bring scary, heart pounding lightning, literally and figuratively, and can easily derail our well-intentioned behaviors and send us spiraling into a stressed out mess of emotions.  Or, we can calmly relinquish control of our lives to the one who loves us more than anyone else and be confident that He has our back and will see us through to the other side of the storm.

The scene outside our home a few minutes
after the lightning strike.