I thought I'd take a moment this evening to explain why I am
passionate about the subject of "keeping the home." Here is a
journal entry of mine from April 29, 2004:
"Last night God seemed to have impressed Titus 2 on my heart, the
passage about teaching the younger women to 'love their husbands,'
and to 'be keepers of their homes.' Keepers of their homes. How
BEAUTIFUL that is!
Keep...keep the family together, keep it straight, keep it organized,
keep it clean, keep it happy, keep it healthy. It gets my mind a-
whirlin'!
To be a keeper of a home seems so natural to me that my heart skips a beat at just the thought of it. I'm going to pray diligently for Tim (dh). With him leading our home, and me keeping our home, our lives will be balanced, God will be honored, and our children will be blessed."
Since that journal entry several months ago, I have felt increasingly
that I am not only to be a keeper of my own home, but I am to train
my daughters to be future keepers of their homes. Not only that, I
have felt a burden to help other women discover this urge from God.
As I mentioned above, this is a natural urge to me, and I think it is
a natural urge to you, too. As women, we are created to fulfill our
role as the keeper of the home. We dream of it from a young age.
A keeper of the home is every woman, whether you are single, a single parent, a stay-at-home mom, a working mom ... you are the keeper of the home. You are the HEART of the home. God created you to be this. If you are not fulfilling this role, you are no doubt yearning for it.
Do you want to start now? It is easy. Just follow your heart. It already knows what to do.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Hurricane Ivan
We survived Hurricane Ivan! It was a scary, intense thing. We only NOW, 3 weeks later, got Internet and phone lines back up. The hurricane came EXACTLY at us, and we found ourselves in the eye of the storm. Before the eye the noise was deafening outside. Even 4 days later, I can't stop dreaming about that sound at night. While we were in the eye of the storm for 2 hours, everyone else was getting hammered by it and not getting the break that we received. Because of that, Baldwin County (not including the beaches ) looks damaged but well compared to Escambia County, Florida (where Pensacola is).
Pensacola is the biggest mess I've ever seen. There were trees fallen on every street, even three days after the disaster, which is when we finally were allowed to enter the county. The roads to Escambia County were closed to us coming in for three days, so we only managed to get into there Saturday to check on our renters' house and Mom & Dad's house. We had to drive around trees on all but the major roads. We only saw 2 gas stations open, and the lines to those were literally a mile long in each direction. To see Pensacola photos, go to : www.pensacolanewsjournal.com . Our house in Pensacola has roof damage and two huge pine trees down - one on the power cords. It's such a low house that it fared much better than taller homes.
As it was, we stayed home at our house in Fairhope, Alabama. We didn't have anywhere to go to evacuate, but in the middle of the worst, I questioned our judgement! The kids slept in the hallway, except Alyssa Belle who was in the master bathroom in her playpen. They only awoke during the eye of the storm. The quiet was what woke them. It had been windy for over 15 hours at that point -- Ivan was so large that we started out with a tropical depression then tropical storm that lasted hours ( we experienced the storm for 30 hours total from end to end). When the eye came, it was so still that not a single leaf was blowing. Tim walked outside and looked around at the damage we had - fallen power lines, fallen trees around the house. We had heard "booms" on the roof, which were just fallen branches that hadn't caused any damage. They sounded worse than they were.
We are very impressed with our strong house that never seemed to even shudder and with the geography of the place. Even during the highest winds (around 130mph sustained, gusts were higher), Tim & I could open the doors and watch or even stand on the front porch for a bit (not for long! We could hear branches flying past). We felt wind, but no more than a stormy summer day. In Pensacola, during Hurricane Opal in 1995, we couldn't open our door without difficulty and Opal wasn't as strong of a storm as this one. But here, we live in a valley so the winds were mostly above us, flying past. The winds would catch our taller trees and sway them. Tim & I lay down quilts and pillows and watched out the door of our laundry room for a couple of hours. The sky glowed white during the storm, so we could see the tree outlines. There are three pines in our backyard that are next to each other in a straight line. Tim mentioned that they were tall enough to fall on the house. I told him that "those trees will NOT fall, I just know it, because I call them the Father, Son and Holy Ghost" (sure enough, we have other pines down, but not those three!).
We made the chickens a nice little hurricane shelter in their pen, but the doggone chickens lived out the storm on a roost that we had left exposed to the wind and rain (!). We kept looking at them during the storm with our high-powered flashlight, and they were always on that roost, looking wetter than they've ever been, and huddled together. The winds never seemed strong where they were, though, which is in a sheltered spot under trees.
We fell asleep during the eye of the storm, around 2am, and never woke up to hear the other side come through. Around 6:30am, I woke up to tropical storm force winds and a flooded back yard. The river was up over half of our yard (it crested 10 feet away from the bottom of our hill that the house is built on. the neighbor's basement flooded by several inches). And my stupid chickens were still on their roost, but now for a good reason as the river had flooded their pen up to 4 feet. I waded out there and saved my birds, of course. Brenden helped, and Tim and the neighbor, Chris, thought it was funny and took photos and video of us. They thought it was especially hilarious when one freaked-out hen flew over my head in the pen as I was holding another hen upside down. She then flew into the pen's walls, then fell into the river where I found out a chicken can float. Eventually, after much screaming (and telling her she's going into the pot if she ever flies at my head again), I caught her and saved her life, too. Later the river flooded up past the roost, around 7 feet high.
Today, the power is on and the river is down, I have phone and internet only because Tim spliced the phone line and hooked it up himself. We feel nearly normal after a morning spent doing laundry and cleaning out the fridge and freezer (a huge mess!!!). In the past few days, we've gotten food, water and ice from FEMA and food, baby items, and cleaning items from the Church of Christ. Both helped so much. One neighbor brought a grill and a bunch of meat that his store was giving employees to grill out (chicken breasts, hot dogs, hamburger patties), another neighbor offered use of his generator for an hour or two each evening so we could try to keep our freezer cold (didn't make much difference after all). Now we are able to help that neighbor back since his power didnt' come back on (a tree fell on his personal line), so we ran an extension cord to his house. It's been a time of people helping people.
We were miserable without air conditioning, and I missed the washing machine, but otherwise we had fun with the power off. We made a lot of bonfires (to Stone's, the pyromaniac, delight) and swam in the heat of the day in our flooded back yard. Yesterday we climbed around on the fallen trees in the back yard. We can now cross the river on several different logs. A tornado came through there, taking down over 20 trees in just our area of the riverbank, including several of our big cedars. It is not a bad thing entirely, as one fallen cedar created a cove for us, and the river dumped literally tons of pure white sand onto our riverbank, creating a very nice beach. The neighbors will help us clear the river, but for now we have bridges that are fun to sit on and dangle your feet in the water. The smell of the neighborhood is awesome, from the fallen pines and cedar.
I'll send photos when I can get them uploaded. We're going to go over to Pensacola as much as we can to volunteer somewhere over there. It was a sad sight to see the whole city so messed up. We feel very guilty having our power back so quickly when so many are without even a home. ( 6 power trucks came into our little street to help us; our kids were sitting on the porch bench watching them, so the power guys gave the kids Cokes and Snickers. The guys were from Tennessee).
Take care!
Lori for the whole family!
Pensacola is the biggest mess I've ever seen. There were trees fallen on every street, even three days after the disaster, which is when we finally were allowed to enter the county. The roads to Escambia County were closed to us coming in for three days, so we only managed to get into there Saturday to check on our renters' house and Mom & Dad's house. We had to drive around trees on all but the major roads. We only saw 2 gas stations open, and the lines to those were literally a mile long in each direction. To see Pensacola photos, go to : www.pensacolanewsjournal.com . Our house in Pensacola has roof damage and two huge pine trees down - one on the power cords. It's such a low house that it fared much better than taller homes.
As it was, we stayed home at our house in Fairhope, Alabama. We didn't have anywhere to go to evacuate, but in the middle of the worst, I questioned our judgement! The kids slept in the hallway, except Alyssa Belle who was in the master bathroom in her playpen. They only awoke during the eye of the storm. The quiet was what woke them. It had been windy for over 15 hours at that point -- Ivan was so large that we started out with a tropical depression then tropical storm that lasted hours ( we experienced the storm for 30 hours total from end to end). When the eye came, it was so still that not a single leaf was blowing. Tim walked outside and looked around at the damage we had - fallen power lines, fallen trees around the house. We had heard "booms" on the roof, which were just fallen branches that hadn't caused any damage. They sounded worse than they were.
We are very impressed with our strong house that never seemed to even shudder and with the geography of the place. Even during the highest winds (around 130mph sustained, gusts were higher), Tim & I could open the doors and watch or even stand on the front porch for a bit (not for long! We could hear branches flying past). We felt wind, but no more than a stormy summer day. In Pensacola, during Hurricane Opal in 1995, we couldn't open our door without difficulty and Opal wasn't as strong of a storm as this one. But here, we live in a valley so the winds were mostly above us, flying past. The winds would catch our taller trees and sway them. Tim & I lay down quilts and pillows and watched out the door of our laundry room for a couple of hours. The sky glowed white during the storm, so we could see the tree outlines. There are three pines in our backyard that are next to each other in a straight line. Tim mentioned that they were tall enough to fall on the house. I told him that "those trees will NOT fall, I just know it, because I call them the Father, Son and Holy Ghost" (sure enough, we have other pines down, but not those three!).
We made the chickens a nice little hurricane shelter in their pen, but the doggone chickens lived out the storm on a roost that we had left exposed to the wind and rain (!). We kept looking at them during the storm with our high-powered flashlight, and they were always on that roost, looking wetter than they've ever been, and huddled together. The winds never seemed strong where they were, though, which is in a sheltered spot under trees.
We fell asleep during the eye of the storm, around 2am, and never woke up to hear the other side come through. Around 6:30am, I woke up to tropical storm force winds and a flooded back yard. The river was up over half of our yard (it crested 10 feet away from the bottom of our hill that the house is built on. the neighbor's basement flooded by several inches). And my stupid chickens were still on their roost, but now for a good reason as the river had flooded their pen up to 4 feet. I waded out there and saved my birds, of course. Brenden helped, and Tim and the neighbor, Chris, thought it was funny and took photos and video of us. They thought it was especially hilarious when one freaked-out hen flew over my head in the pen as I was holding another hen upside down. She then flew into the pen's walls, then fell into the river where I found out a chicken can float. Eventually, after much screaming (and telling her she's going into the pot if she ever flies at my head again), I caught her and saved her life, too. Later the river flooded up past the roost, around 7 feet high.
Today, the power is on and the river is down, I have phone and internet only because Tim spliced the phone line and hooked it up himself. We feel nearly normal after a morning spent doing laundry and cleaning out the fridge and freezer (a huge mess!!!). In the past few days, we've gotten food, water and ice from FEMA and food, baby items, and cleaning items from the Church of Christ. Both helped so much. One neighbor brought a grill and a bunch of meat that his store was giving employees to grill out (chicken breasts, hot dogs, hamburger patties), another neighbor offered use of his generator for an hour or two each evening so we could try to keep our freezer cold (didn't make much difference after all). Now we are able to help that neighbor back since his power didnt' come back on (a tree fell on his personal line), so we ran an extension cord to his house. It's been a time of people helping people.
We were miserable without air conditioning, and I missed the washing machine, but otherwise we had fun with the power off. We made a lot of bonfires (to Stone's, the pyromaniac, delight) and swam in the heat of the day in our flooded back yard. Yesterday we climbed around on the fallen trees in the back yard. We can now cross the river on several different logs. A tornado came through there, taking down over 20 trees in just our area of the riverbank, including several of our big cedars. It is not a bad thing entirely, as one fallen cedar created a cove for us, and the river dumped literally tons of pure white sand onto our riverbank, creating a very nice beach. The neighbors will help us clear the river, but for now we have bridges that are fun to sit on and dangle your feet in the water. The smell of the neighborhood is awesome, from the fallen pines and cedar.
I'll send photos when I can get them uploaded. We're going to go over to Pensacola as much as we can to volunteer somewhere over there. It was a sad sight to see the whole city so messed up. We feel very guilty having our power back so quickly when so many are without even a home. ( 6 power trucks came into our little street to help us; our kids were sitting on the porch bench watching them, so the power guys gave the kids Cokes and Snickers. The guys were from Tennessee).
Take care!
Lori for the whole family!
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Friday, October 01, 2004
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