I know, from experience, it will be over eventually. And when you read this, I really hope everyone across the Ozarks has power.
I can really relate. When the Ice Storm of 2007 took out my home's power, I was in the cold, cold dark for 13 days. The temperature in my house dropped to 15 degrees by the third night.
Always the optimist, (well, almost always), I tried to find some good in my powerless predicament, no pun intended.
I soon realized how much of the person to person contact that the television, Internet and phone had taken away. I found that games of Scrabble in front of a fireplace, long chats in the dark and the beautiful silence of a powered-down world, is something we don't experience often.
Now, I’m not going to lie. I was griping, cursing and crying about no electricity just as loud as the next person by about Day 6 of no power. But call it an attempt to see the good in the bad, I definitely had a lot more time to think with the power off.
It reminded me of the book we studied in high school, "Walden," by Henry David Thoreau. The gist of the story is wrapped up in my favorite quote of all time. Mr. Thoreau said, “I went into the woods for I wished to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life! To put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
My life with electricity was just what Thoreau was escaping when he went into the woods and lived away from society and “modern” conveniences. If it took two weeks without electricity to teach me to think about what really matters – family, friends, health, life simplified – then I guess that’s a small price to pay.
My prayers to you who suffered and are still suffering from loss in the storm. I wish you peace and comfort in your tragedies.
God Bless,
