You Never Know

This past week has been full of things I did not expect. It’s mostly good with one very freaky, never seen before event to make you wonder.

The Car Exchange

We have an older vehicle that is still doing well, but it was starting to show some of it’s age in the under carriage. It’s about the only thing that seems to take out our Toyotas. At 11 years old and 170,000 miles my husband decided we should go look at cars. This did not surprise me because it’s been an idea bounced around this year, especially after a winter brake overhaul and the mention of things showing more rust.

It would either by another Toyota Rav-4 or a Nissan Rogue. The Toyota lot looked pathetic and we didn’t like the style of the new Toyota’s. So we had fun driving a couple of Nissan Rogues. Way different with all the push buttony gizmos including pushing buttons for gear shifting and putting it into park. I had no issues (I’m such a techno nerd), but it made my husband a nervous wreck after years of having used some sort of lever to shift.

But…

They had this older RAV-4 with only 30K miles on it and close to his favorite color. And I loved it, too. So today we came home with a shiny new to us car that both of us are comfortable driving. A little haggling got it priced closer to what I wanted. Then when we showed up to see the best loan deal they could get us and it was almost exactly the payment I had figured would work for us.

The craziest thing was this dealer had a lot of interest in this vehicle through the website. One lady even left her info via the site, but never called back when called. She had the audacity to get mad that he sold it by the time she decided to show up on the weekend. We put a hold on it Thursday.

As with most of my life, and hubby agrees, God definitely played a part in showing us this was what we should do. Color, make, model, age, and milage made things come out nicely.

Debbie Downer

This is what I am calling our Friday afternoon with Debbie. She rolled in just before 2pm to say high to our part of NY. It turns out she decided our little area and a village southeast of us would be great places to dump rain like never seen before. Irene did this back in 2011, but her colossal dump went into the town we go to church and the one just up river of it. We had about a max level run off consistent with a couple other floods or spring thaws.

Now, our house is close to the stream, but it has to rise a lot to get to our house. Friday it got high enough to reach the corner foundation post of an addition. I’ll tell the rest of the story in pictures.

Prior flooding reached the base of this tree. This surge came so fast we did not expect it and that water is splashing at least four feet up the trunk, which is about level with where the corner post comes out of the ground up the bank from the tree.

Our backyard loses about 6 feet or so elevation from the house to the lower end. The red line is where Debbie reached. Orange line is highest it ever flooded in this stream in the past 30 years for sure. Blue line is where the edge of the bank used to be.

So, she didn’t damage our house but got close enough to push water under the deck style flooring of the addition. Check out that tree that has come to its final rest. The maple from above is the same one in this picture. It is still standing but has lost a lot of bark where it was submerged.

That hose didn’t even move because the water just missed it, but now we have a straight drop off instead of a bank that sloped down to around the blue line. I took this picture looking down from the addition window.

We expected a flood, but not that. Things could have gone far worse and grabbing three quick pictures near the crest of the surge feels surreal now. There wasn’t much to do other than grab the phone, snap things quick and then wait it out.

We lost power for no more than a few seconds early in the downpour. I stayed connected to a Zoom call for the coach training I am taking shortly after the outage though my lights flickered a few times. The sudden cresting surge came 20 minutes after the call ended. Before that it was around the top flooding we had ever seen.

All I can do is thank and praise God for the provision that kept us safe. We expected flooding, but not this. To think a babbling brook around a mile from its headwaters could surge nearly 8 feet above normal flow level.

The weekend turned out really nice and driving to church the day after for a women’s tea and fellowship, showed where water had flowed, but it all looked normal over that way. Well, a tree decided to fall into the road while I was enjoying myself and left just enough room to get around it on the way home.

Conclusion

You never know what life will bring you, but with God on your side, you can have peace in any storm. You also get proof you are making the right choices when you pay attention. Life is not easier or less scary with Him, but we don’t have to live in fear because God is our fortress. He’s with us in all things.