My thoughts on Christianity, Technology, Leadership, and Weight Loss.
What’s another sign of me getting more settled in Oklahoma? I’m now able to get both of the cars in the garage. I wish I could say that I’m able to get the car in because I’ve completely organized the garage, but…that would be a lie. The truth is that I’ve pushed all the junk off to the sides just enough to get the car in. Someday, I’ll get around to organizing it.
So now when I leave in the morning, I won’t have to face situations like this anymore…
It’s been a little more than a week since the ice storm here in Oklahoma. We were one of 500,000 homes that were without power. The electric utility in this area called it the worst disaster they’ve ever experienced. This power outage caught us by surprise. We knew the ice was coming. We knew that the town would shut down. But what we didn’t realize was that we could lose power and that it could be down for days. When we lost power, I thought it would come back in an hour or two, so I went off to work. Five hours later, my wife called to say that there is still no power. I started watching the new reports and saw that thousands of people across the state had lost power and it was going to take the utility 7-10 days to get it back up. Wow…this was a lot worse than I thought.
I left work and went to Lowe’s to pick up firewood and other supplies. There were a lot of other people in the store doing the same thing. It was just like something from TV news, where people are frantically getting supplies before the approaching hurricane makes landfall. Thankfully, I was able to get three days worth of firewood and some batteries for flashlights. I went home and saw my neighbors were more prepared. A lot of them had generators going in their garages. They had been through this before.
After spending one night huddled around a fireplace, we decided we had enough and went down to visit with friends in Dallas. I also used this trip to visit our church campus in Fort Worth. After spending the day in Dallas, we found that the power was back on and headed back home (it’s kinda weird referring to Oklahoma as being home, after only living here a week.)
As life has gotten back to normal, I’ve been reflecting on things. Here are some of those thoughts. I’m so thankful to have electricity and power. It was so easy to take that stuff for granted. It’s amazing how dependent we’ve become on those things. What would we do without our cars, computers, ipods? I thank God for the things that He has given me to make my life easier. What piece of technology are you thankful for?
What an insane time it has been. In the last few days, I’ve picked up my life from Illinois and moved it to Oklahoma. It was no small task. Here’s what it looked like…
Thursday, Thanksgiving Day – Pack, Spend time with extended family, then pack some more
Friday – Finish packing, moving truck arrives
Saturday – Clean up empty house
Sunday – Drop off kids at sister’s, jam as much as we can into a Geo Prizm, Alice and I drive to Oklahoma
Monday – Walk through new house, buy new appliances, celebrate wedding anniversary at a nice restaurant
Tuesday – Close on new house, start cleaning new house, register kids for school
Wednesday – Keep cleaning, appliances arrive, convince delivery people that refrigerator **can** fit through doorway if you just take the refrigerator doors off, got utilities turned on, Praise God for heat
Thursday – Moving truck arrives, unpacking begins
Friday – Fly back to Illinois to get kids, final cleanup of IL house
Saturday – Drive through an ice storm with family to Oklahoma
Sunday – Unpack, get required shots for kids for school
Monday – Kids start school and I start work
I want to thank everyone for their prayers for us during this crazy time. God has been so good to us. The kids have adjusted pretty well and I am enjoying my new job. I have a stable connection to the internet again and, yesterday, I learned how to blog from the Terry Storch. I can’t wait to start blogging again.
It’s been a couple of days, but I finally found the cable for my camera. Here are some pictures from the day we moved our stuff from Illinois to Oklahoma.
Six hours later and the movers are gone. They filled up half of a semi trailer with our stuff. Hopefully, we’ll see it again in a few days. I took some cool pictures, but I can’t upload them yet. I can’t find my camera cable. I have a feeling I’m going to be saying stuff like that for the next few months.While the movers were here, my wife took the kids to the grandparents. So, here I am, alone, in an empty house. I’m walking around here and getting pretty nostalgic. There are six years worth of memories here. This has been the longest that we’ve lived in one house. It’s the only house my youngest has known.
Why am I getting so sad about this? It’s just a house, right? I don’t know. It seems more than just a place where I eat and sleep. It’s the place where first steps were taken, the place where the kids returned from first days at school, the place where my daughter had her first seizure and where God eventually healed her from them. It’s the place where we played board games as a family and made dinners together as a family. It’s where my wife and I talked and talked and became closer friends.
I’ll be more excited in a few days when we close on the new house, start unpacking, and start my new job. But for now, I’m just little sad.
I hope that everyone reading this had a great Thanksgiving. As usual, the Thomas family spent time with extended family. It was nice to hang out with the aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, and nieces. With this being my last Thanksgiving as a resident of Illinois, the day took on a special meaning for me. I’m not sure when I’ll be seeing some of these relatives again. I have been thanking God for my family. They’ve been very supportive of us with our move to Oklahoma.
We’ve spend the last week leading up to Thanksgiving by packing, packing, and more packing. Nearly all of our belongings are in brown cardboard boxes. We were still packing up stuff this morning. But finally, the packing is done. Now, we are just waiting for the big moving truck to arrive. They’re already an hour late. Hopefully the rest of the day will go smoother.
While I’m excited about starting the next chapter in my life, I’m also sad to be leaving my friends and family here in Illinois. I can see that I been living a life that is too comfortable. God is drawing me out of that comfort zone. I don’t know what He’s got planned, but I know that it’s going to be awesome.
Where’s that truck? More moving day updates will follow soon…
My youngest son, Jacob, age 5 wasn’t feeling well one morning this week. So my wife gave him some medicine. After he had taken the medicine, I had just remembered the recent news headlines about not giving cold medicine to children under the age of 6. So I asked Jacob, “Did Momma give you cold medicine?” He replied, “No, it was warm.” I’m still laughing about that.
Yesterday, we celebrated my son, Caleb’s 11th birthday. Now, birthdays are always a meaningful time for me. I look with pride at how my kids are developing and take the opportunity to shower them with love. For my son Caleb, his birthdays take on a very special meaning. I use it as an opportunity to reflect on what God has done in his life.
My son has a very rare genetic condition called Cardio-Facio-Cutaneous syndrome, or CFC syndrome for short. The condition affects those three area of the body, cardio (heart), facio (facial features), and cutaneous (skin). This is a very rare condition. In fact, there are only 100 known cases of it around the world.
Children with CFC syndrome may have certain features such as relatively large head size, down-slanting eyes, sparse eyebrows, curly hair, areas of thickened or scaly skin, and small stature. Most will also have a heart defect. While there is a wide spectrum of severity in CFC syndrome, most individuals will have some degree of learning difficulty and developmental delay. Many CFC children have difficulty swallowing food or walking.
My wife, Alice and I have been amazed at what God has done in Caleb’s life. While Caleb would rather eat softer foods, he is able to swallow his food. Caleb is able not only able to walk, but also run. Earlier this summer, he won the gold medal in the 50M run at the Illinois State Special Olympics. This is quite a miracle when you consider there were doctors who told us Caleb would never walk.
Even though he faces physical and mental challenges, he always perseveres and he always has a smile on his face. So Caleb, I don’t know if you will ever read this blog, but if you do, I want you to know that your Dad is very proud of you and he loves you very much.
For more info about CFC Syndrome, go to http://www.cfcsyndrome.org/
