It was a dark and stormy night

The rain fell, not too hard … but solidly and occasionally with a brief exception that was forceful. The wind blew through the trees with a impact that broke through the outer layer of one’s attire and dug into the skin. This was making our few last days of Spring quite the show of nature.

And then … kabloowey … power was out. Darkness filled the house, more than normal in rural Appomattox. The church lights were off too, so no lights were coming through the windows except the occasional headlights on the road less traveled. I looked across to the neighbors houses, and they had at least one light on.

I checked websites for outages in the area … none. I contacted Dominion Power … but they’re app didn’t have a way to report an outage. So I went to their webpage and electronically let them know my little predicament.

All this is normal … but what wasn’t normal was their response. They called within a few minutes. Verifying. And I also informed them of the church outage. They told me a team was out doing another service in the area and I would be next. It was only a couple of hours, but they showed up in the storm and went to work right away. The work on replacing/repairing a transformer was in my front yard, but noise was at a minimal. I watched (from inside) but went back to sleep. On my next shake from slumber … the power had been restored.

Great service, good communication, personal contact, and a relatively swift remedy.

Life doesn’t always go so smoothly. Often, relational or circumstantial storms hit … and the impact and damage are not remedied for years. We don’t seek fixes, we wait and let things fester, and we often expect the issue to just go away – or at least the person to just go away. In church life (my circle of society), we often settle issues by moving churches.

But these Dom Power workers got out there in the storm. They took the tough road to fix the problem. They got as much information as possible and addressed the issue. They showed they cared.

I know power outages and relational issues are not the same. But I also know we could be challenged a little by the way this issue was resolved.

Maybe I am just rambling and thinking weird because I didn’t get much sleep … but maybe not.

Be angry … but don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

Have a blessed day.