Miracles

How often have you not found that red box of cookies in the pantry

Because

The cookies were right in front of your nose in a green box?

How often have you not found that green box of cookies you thought were in the back of the pantry

Because

The box was right in front of your nose?

How many miracles have you not seen

Because

You’ve been looking in the wrong place,

For the wrong thing,

At the wrong time,

Or not looking at all?

I tell you the truth, you will never see a miracle until you believe that miracles exist.

© Istvan es Carmela, September 2005 (166)

Last blog I wrote about the fireworks and then the rain. Some would say that was just coincidence, but I don’t believe that. Just in case there be about any doubts about the possibility of miracles, let me recount what happened the following week:

We had a big wedding scheduled for Saturday. It was a 100 person outdoor package, complete with food, tent, dancing, and more. Jennifer was coordinating the entire event.

The wedding party had rented the Windsor House for the night before the wedding and the night of the wedding. The wedding party went to a rehearsal dinner at Mercado’s, a well known Mexican restaurant in Tyler, the night before the event and returned to the Windsor House about midnight to sleep. We had retired to our house in the woods earlier, for we had a big day ahead of us.

At about 2 am Jennifer, Bryce, and Johnathan were awakened in our house by much thunder and lightning, and the sound of heavy winds whipping the trees. Jennifer described it as “strobe lights in the window.” Johnathan described it as “a freight train” – although there are no train tracks within miles of Roseland. I slept through it all. I can sleep through anything.

Then, at about 2:30 the power went out. Utter blackness; you couldn’t even see the tip of your nose! When I awoke at 7 the next morning, the power was still off. I recalled hearing some thunder the night before, and didn’t pay much attention to the power outage; it’s not an uncommon experience, and power usually comes on in an hour or two. Well, by 8 am the power still hadn’t come on; we had a full house; and the wedding day activities were about to begin with a big breakfast. Unfortunately the entire house, including the oven, stove, water heater, and air conditioner, run on electricity. The electric company promised to restore service by noon. What to do? What to do?

We quickly called Edom Bakery and Grill who was able to provide an excellent breakfast of eggs, sausage, and biscuits – apparently their power was still on. Then we immediately cornered the portable generator rentals market in Tyler, just in case. By the time we were done, we had 5 portable generators in stock, ready to go.

First Hit

In the meantime, the wedding party was preparing for a 5 pm wedding, setting up the Chapel and ballroom. The bride and bridesmaid wanted to take baths and get ready, but there was no hot water. Clearly it was time to put the generators into operation, which should have been a simple proposition. Not so!

I will not bore you with the technical details, but suffice it to say that I spent most of the day trying to find the proper plugs and connectors. We finally succeeded by about 3 pm, but that was too late for the bridal party, who had to prepare for the wedding without hot water. Although we had been running the main water heater off a dedicated generator since noon – the largest one with plenty of capacity - something was wrong: There was still no hot water.

“This makes no sense,” I thought to myself. “What’s going on?”

It turns out the generator was faulty and would power the water heater for about 5 minutes then trip (without any indicator of failure). After fiddling around with this for about an hour or so I figured out the problem; substituted a smaller generator; and soon we had hot water. Too bad it was already 4 pm!

Second Hit

Noon had come and gone with still no power, so we decided to conduct the entire wedding on generators. While I was messing with the hot water heater, Johnathan strung extension cords everywhere: The Chapel, tent, ball room, video projector, and DJ stand. We actually had to augment our inventory with four new, long, extra heavy duty extension cords. Ultimately everything was set and ready to go, and the wedding proceeded beautifully. Katie, Aaron, and our guests all complimented Jennifer and told us it was the most beautiful wedding they had experienced. A miracle? Perhaps…

Third Hit

By 9 pm the wedding party began to wind down, but there was still no power! The Windsor House was completely dark; we provided flashlights so our guests could find their stuff. So once more we reconfigured the generators and strung extension cords throughout the Windsor House, providing light in every room. Most of our guests chose to go home, but several brave souls stayed overnight.

Next morning, we still had no power so we provided a full breakfast using the portable generators. Our guests finally left Roseland Sunday morning at 11 am. And literally just as they were driving out the front gate, the power came back on. We had experienced a 36 hour outage and not only survived, but succeeded in providing our guests with an outstanding, unforgettable memory for life. But that wasn’t the real miracle.

After the guests left, we surveyed the property and found that the entire power outage was caused by a tornado passing through. The power outage was caused by lots of huge oak trees toppled throughout the area all up and down 64. The real miracle, however, was that the tornado spared Roseland and all who were here:

Last Hit

When it hit, it ripped out and toppled a large, 2 ft diameter oak tree within 200 feet of our house in the woods, hopped over the house where we were sleeping and touched down again about 200 feet on the other side of our house - also about 200 feet from the Chapel. At that point it toppled two pines and another huge oak tree – this one with a trunk about 4 feet in diameter. Then it hopped over Roseland entirely and completely destroyed our neighbor’s equipment shed which is less than 300 feet from the Windsor House. Not one penny of damage was sustained by any building on Roseland property. Now that is truly a miracle! As in many times past – most recently the previous week - God blessed and protected Roseland and all who were there. Thank you, Lord!

The events of the weekend prove that miracles do indeed exist all around us all the time, if you look for them and recognize them. The biggest miracle of all, however, is you and I – that we exist at all and that our Creator loves us so much that He was willing to die on the Cross just so we could spend eternity with Him. Wow! What a miracle!

Johnathan on Forklift Clearing Fallen Tree