A hole the size of a car’s front bumper (and then some) is now an eye sore on the side of our house. The police report states that there were “no significant injuries” and our insurance adjuster assures us, “We’ll take care of everything. All of this will be like new.”

We can’t help but thank God for his protection and for the help we’ve already been given in cleaning up and sorting through the aftermath of a concrete block explosion.

I was working at my computer, caffeinated, and feeling great about all I was accomplishing when a lady left her nine-to-five day job and hi-tailed it to our house. Trouble is, she wasn’t invited, and she didn’t drive to the corner and turn into our driveway, or ring our doorbell. She drove on the wrong side of the road for a while, nearly went into a creek, then overcorrected (or perhaps went unconscious), jumped the curb two lawns down from ours, plowed down a solidly posted mailbox, and made straight and clear snow tracks between two of our neighbor’s trees before the crash. All that, with no evidence she saw danger or attempted to avoid what one can only assume was an accident.

The noise was deafening. Chunks of concrete block, and other debris, flew all around me. Some as far as thirty feet across our basement. I felt something scrape the side of my head as it flew by, and a blow to my upper arm, but my computer screen was still lit. My new, hi-back office chair had shielded me from the biggest pieces of flying concrete. I didn’t click to save my work or shut down anything. I turned to see where the rocks had come from, and screamed, “Roger!”

He thought lightening had struck, but I thought gas explosion. The electrical box, previously attached to the wall, was now dangling. I should have known how to shut the gas off, but I yelled for Roger to do it. Turning off the gas seemed the immediate thing to do.

“The gas shutoff is outside.” He looked at the hole in our wall and pointed toward the stairs for me to go. But I wasn’t going without him. He says that he didn’t smell gas, which is why he stepped deeper into the cloud of dust for a better look instead of following my command. But other than a gas explosion, what could have caused this?

“There’s a car out there!”

Now, the immediate thing to do was to run outside and tend to the driver. I grabbed my phone, not thinking that it might not function, ran up the stairs, and raced out the front door. One of the two drivers who had witnessed everything outside our house called 911, and the other was assisting the lady driver. She was walking on her own, steady and coherent. Whew!

Thank God for airbags.

Police and firemen arrived. “Ma’am. Were you hurt? Is there anyone in the house?”

Roger? Where is Roger? Is he still in the house? And then I saw him…with flashlight in hand, checking out the car and the property damage.

So, I’ve been thankful for my husband for about sixteen years now, but never more thankful than today. He tells me that he’s never been more thankful for me. We have yet to know the extent of structural damage to our house, but our home is intact and as beautiful as ever.

Thank God for homes.

Thanksgiving Day 2018, and the parade in New York City is happening as I write this, and I still need to make a pecan pie. We have much – for which we are thankful.