Great Day Turned Into A BAD Night!

Sunday, my son was able to pick up his daughter to spend some time with her & he brought her to the house so that I could see her :) I haven't seen her since April, so this truly was a blessing! I could have held her & hugged her all day long, but being a typical 2 year old, she is very active & was running around the house chasing the dogs most of the day. Here are just a couple of the photos I took of her while she was here. I just love the one above.....she truly looks like an angel in this photo!
Here she is with her proud daddy :) He was so happy to spend some time with her!
Here she is hugging Onyx. Onyx didn't mind at all & even gave her lots of kisses!

Now, on to the bad night :( Last night (or should I say this morning at 2:10 a.m.), a thunderstorm came through & woke me up. I, in turn, woke Jim up & he held my hand because he knows how scared I am of thunderstorms. I then started praying to God to keep us both safe & to let the storm pass by quickly. Just as I was saying my prayer, a bolt of lightning struck our house! I jumped out of bed because right away, I could smell smoke & our alarm system started going off in the basement! I called 911 & was both crying & screaming on the phone. Jim & I got the dogs into the car & I just wanted to back the car out of the garage so we'd at least be out of the house. Just as we got into the car, the garage door opener started closing on it's own! Needless to say, I really started to freak out then because we couldn't even open the garage door by hand! I felt like I was trapped in my own home! Shortly there after, the firemen arrived & they had to break a wire on the garage door just so we could get the door to open. They also had to pull the fuse & battery on the alarm system to get it to shut off. They did a thorough inspection of our home & found some places where the lightning had gone through the eaves of our roof. They also inspected the attic since we told them we smelled smoke & used this lens thing to check between the walls.

Below are some pictures of the noticeable damage. We have a contractor coming this afternoon to inspect all of our electrical items. As of right now, it looks like we need to replace the garage door opener, the alarm system, the lawn sprinkler system, the tv in my scraproom, both of our alarm clocks & Jim's XBox system. ETA: Upon further inspection, we found that Cassie's stereo & printer are both fried as well as her 2 Wire internet access PC Port.

Here is the part of the eave over the deck that had a piece of wood blown off of it. We found the piece laying on the deck.
Here are some burn marks in the eave above our bedroom window.
Another part of the eave near our bedroom.
After the firemen left, we were checking out all of our rooms & noticed this spot in our master bedroom & immediately called 911 back to see if they would come out & check it. Apparently, the bolt of lightning went into the metal brace thing where the drywall attaches at the corner & it popped a hole in our drywall right where my wallpaper border is. Jim said that this must have been the spot where he saw the bright flash come from!
Here is the light fixture in Cassie's bedroom. It was partially popped off the wall.....see the hole above it? That's where the anchor for the fixture goes & where the fixture is supposed to be attached at. ETA: After having an electrician inspect this light, he found a burn spot behind it so he said that it looks like we were actually hit twice by the lightning!

All in all, we are VERY fortunate, blessed & lucky & we both realize that! It could have been a LOT worse! I emailed my dear friend Cindy Lee this morning to tell her about what happened & because I was having a lot of questions regarding my faith after this & she reassured me that God was watching over us & that the devil was trying to get us to turn away from God. She also said that the devil had far worse in store for us, but God protected us from letting that happen! Thank-you, Cindy Lee for the encouragement I needed & for the prayers!

Please say a prayer for us as we now go through the process of filing a claim with our insurance company & coming up with our outrageous deductible ($1,000), which we WILL be lowering after this!

Thank-you God for watching over us! I promise I'm going to try to never doubt my faith again!

Benita