Friday, July 5, 2013

"You can't see the forest for the trees"

Sunday Evening May 5th

Facebook Post May 5th: (Me) Many of you have texted or called and asked if the Wedding is still on!  You bet it is!  Now it will be a celebration not only of Marriage but of Life itself!

Despite the DishNetwork Cable that lay on the ground across our driveway, our T.V.'s were working when the power came back on.  So after returning from Nikki's house, we all sat down to try and relax a bit.  

I'd been recording "Smash" during the 8:00 hour the night before; in fact, David had been watching something when it came on while I was in the office working on the playlists.  He'd hit mute and headed upstairs to watch his game.  So, Sunday evening I sat down to watch the recording.  Fifteen minutes into it, they broke into Severe Weather coverage at our local network and tracked the circular motion that had prompted the Tornado Warning that I knew nothing about. 

What a weird feeling to watch that Doplar Radar map and see the system heading straight towards us.  I actually saw the map focus in on our 3 roads...and then the recording ended.  That is when our power had gone out as I was heading down the stairs with Hunter and King. 

As I wrote earlier, the fact that I was unaware of the approaching storm was not normal.  But, in hindsight, I feel blessed that I was totally oblivious until seconds before the tornado hit us.  There was no time to be frightened.  There was only time to react.  


Facebook Post May 5th: (Nikki) Thanking God my family is alive and whole, now the wedding site on the other hand....but things like this bring it all into perspective. I dont care if we are standing in a tree! We are still gonna party..celebrating life and love!!! I love you, Mom, Daddy, and Hunter! We got this!
                                                                         ------------
Facebook Post May 6th: (Me) Update...The Chickens are ALIVE. The water is on and the whole system will be replaced tomorrow. Still have phone and satellite lines lying on the ground but the power is on, water is flowing, and i have internet! Feeling pretty good tonight!

Monday May 6th


Adrenaline is a funny thing.  It is needed when one is in the middle of any sort of stressful situation.  For the next month, David and I would find that we hit the floor after about four hours of sleep.  It didn't matter what time we went to sleep, four hours later we were up with cups of coffee waiting for the sun to come up and for businesses to open.

It would turn out that Monday was the calmest day we would experience of the next 10 days.  We had the time to really walk our property with the insurance adjuster and see the damage.  

We made a run to the Home Depot to replace tools that were under the barn or the collapsed wooden shed or inside the as of yet unentered metal shed...I can't tell you how many times on Sunday we heard "do you have a ? tool?"....we'd point to the barn and sheds and the person would go "oh".  

After that run to town, I experienced the true meaning of the phrase I used as a title for this post ...walking up to the sagging back gate I saw what looked like a sapling growing in my jasmine garden.  Aggravated because I'd been weeding gardens for weeks in preparation for the wedding,  I leaned over and said "how in the world did you spring up so fast?" and began tugging at it to pull it out of the ground.  

view from inside the fence Monday a.m.

I heard David chuckle behind me and as I looked up and began to turn around to ask 
what was so darned funny...it hit me....

view from inside the fence Monday a.m.

That was not a sapling springing up in my garden.  


It was a little branch....

on a limb..... 

of the 100+ year old tree....

that lay on our fence.

I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

THAT is what the phrase means. 

Its when your brain is so overwhelmed by the destruction before you that it can't process it all at once.  It focuses in on the little things and then moves outward.  

We'd experience a lot of that over the next days. 


11 days until the wedding......









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