What I Learned from the Storm...

It was so good to be back at church this morning.

With our continued bad road conditions we didn't know how many to expect but we had a great turnout! I think people are tired of being cooped up in their houses so they braved the elements and we had a wonderful time of fellowship. You could feel the excitement and expectation in the air!

While I'm ready to get back to routine, this storm has afforded me some neat learning opportunities. Here are a few things I've learned this week:

1. It is HARD to slow down. With travel, business, education and pretty much any other sector of society you can think of shutting down, a person should have been able to sit back, relax and have not a worry in the world as he watched the snowflakes fall.

I did not find that to be the case.

There is something in the back of my mind that kept telling me, "You need to be doing something!"

So I'd check the Facebook. Check the phone. Try writing a message. Do some research. Check the Facebook again. Make a list of things I needed to do. Check the phone. It went on and on like this.

I don't think I was alone as I saw the hundreds of other people making constant status updates stating that they couldn't figure out what to do with themselves.

2. Snow Storms Get People out in their Yards Visiting. You would think that you would see less people during a blizzard, but I found our case to be quite the opposite. Nearly everyday we had interactions with our neighbors as we checked on each other, shoveled snow and visited about the upcoming forecasts.

Just yesterday I spent hours outside mostly because every few minutes someone else from the neighborhood would stop by and talk for a significant amount of time.

During normal weather we might go two or three days without seeing any of our neighbors.

Not so in a snow storm I guess.

3. My wife is AWESOME! Now I already knew she was incredible, but this week I've seen first hand that the magnitude of her awesomeness is off the scale!

As I've spent more time than normal at home, I've watched as she balances the homeschooling, housework, cooking, potty-training, and infant processing (just to name a few things she does), and look at how put together she still looks!

I tried to help out best I could this week, and things were still hard. I have a new respect for what it takes for Shannon to make it through a day. I hope I can keep that perspective and be a better help when the weather and routine gets back to normal.

So how about you? How has your storm experience been and what have you learned?