UNEARTHLY THINGâ—½ ENCOURAGEMENT
Water and electricity are two essentials I will never take for granted again.
In late January 2026, Nashville was hit with a woolly mammoth of an ice storm. The northern part of the city, where I live, seemed to be the bullseye. It started with a brilliant blanket of 4 inches of snow, turning our greyish-brown landscape into a Winter Wonderland. Then, overnight, the temperatures dropped to below freezing, and an inch of ice covered everything. Giant tree limbs sagged with the weight of the ice and then snapped like toothpicks, covering roads and taking down power lines as they crashed to the ground. The cracking of the branches sounded like bombs exploding all around us. Nashville looked like a glistening white war zone.
On Sunday morning, January 25, 2026, the lights flickered, and the power went out. It would stay out for five days. Did I mention we had no internet service either (as of when I'm writing this, we still don’t internet)? Accumulated ice on the wire caused it to snap. We found our cable lying in the street. Also, we lost our cell phone service. No texts or calls went through.
No electricity, internet, or phone. I felt like a pioneer woman.
I also felt sad for my beautiful home that was growing colder by the moment. I was praying desperation prayers. Deep in my soul, I heard the Holy Spirit tell me this was going to last a while. As in days, not hours. As soon as the power went out, my husband Tim and I went into preservation mode. We closed all the window blinds and curtains to retain as much of the 68 degrees of warmth as we could. We put our refrigerated food into a cooler with ice blocks. The frozen food we put out on the porch in a roller bag because, well, it was as cold or colder outside than in our freezer!
Then we waited and prayed.
I slept fitfully that night, waking every hour or so to check if the power had come back on. But the dark stillness told me we were still without electricity, so I prayed. And I fought discouragement and grief.
Monday morning was colder, and still no electricity. Our house had dropped to fifty degrees. Wool sweaters, gloves, and blankets came out. We cooked food on the stove with a few tea light candles under a cooling rack, a power outage hack I had seen on Facebook early Sunday morning. It took a long time, but it really worked! I was grateful God brought that hack into my feed.I spent the day bundled in blankets, wearing gloves and a beanie, reading on the couch. I was starting to enjoy the quieting of the noise the internet and cell phone create in my mind.
Tuesday morning was very cold. Our house had dropped to forty degrees. I could see the steam from my breath while sitting at my dining room table. I started to feel very sleepy. I thought about Googling “What are the symptoms of Hypothermia,” but alas, no internet or phone service.
My hands felt frozen. All of me felt frozen. I wanted to cry, mostly from discouragement. I had been praying nonstop, begging God to restore our power. But it still hadn’t. My sweet home was so cold. More grief set in.
About eleven a.m., we started calling around for a hotel. Many were fully booked by people in our same predicament. By the grace of God, we finally found a hotel room that allowed pets, since we had our two dogs with us. We packed some clothes, prayed for protection over our house, putting it in God’s hands, and hit the road (which was drivable, thankfully).The hotel was in a bit of a sketchy part of town, and their WIFI was down, but we were thankful to be in a warm place. We ordered dinner from Uber Eats and settled in as best we could in a noisy, unfamiliar place.
Wednesday morning, our spirits were low. The Nashville Electric Service map still showed an outage in our area. We saw on the news that crews were working around the clock to clear away downed trees and repair power poles. But our home was still dark.
I apologized to God for whining to Him about our situation. He told me it was okay to grieve. But as I took a hot shower (another thing I will never take for granted again), He showed me how He was taking care of my family and me. We were warm, fed, and had the means to get a motel room to spend the night. I decided to turn my whining into worship. I began thanking God for all He was doing for us and all He provided. I thanked Him that the large tree that fell on our fence didn’t fall on our home or on our recording studio, which houses our business.
We checked out of the motel and headed home, praying all the way that we would find the porch light we left on, shining bright with power when we pulled into our driveway. But it did not. Still no power. Our house was maintaining a forty-degree temperature, which I was grateful for. It meant our pipes were going to survive on the slow trickle of water we had.
It was still too cold to stay home, so we swapped out dirty clothes for clean ones, had a little lunch, and began to seek shelter for the night. We realized it would be better to stay at my parents’ vacant house, which was three miles from our home. There was no furniture since they recently moved to Michigan and were selling the house. But there was electricity, and they were more than happy to let us camp there. It was quiet and relaxing, and we got to cook a good dinner in a fully working kitchen. But we noticed the water pressure was decreasing steadily. Oh no…
The next-door neighbor came over and told us that the water pumping station in their town had lost power, and that the water would be off soon. We had to find a new place to spend the night.
Ugh. Tears of frustration flowed. What do we do? We prayed.
God found us another hotel room. We hung around my parents’ house until the water was properly shut off at the main, and the pipes were drained and left open so they wouldn’t freeze. We packed up again and made our way to the new hotel room.
Thursday morning dawned with the NES outage map still showing our house was lacking power. Frustration and discouragement weighed heavily upon us. We had seen on the news that more households had their power restored, but not ours. I had to choose to praise God in the midst of this crazy situation and be grateful that we had food and shelter during the storm.
God showed me that it was good we were at my parents' empty house to take care of it during the water outage, so they wouldn’t have a disaster on their hands while they were thousands of miles away. Again, I worshipped. God put me in a position to help.
We stopped by the local Kroger and purchased several cases of bottled water, and returned to my parents’ house. After dinner, we took our dishes back home to wash them. While we were there, the power came back on! Hallelujah! Praise God!
Since the ice storm, praising and thanking God for electricity and water are part of my morning devotion time. It’s good for the soul to be grateful for the basic things in life.
And whenever I feel the temptation to whine about something, anything, I turn that whining into worship, because God is always with me, taking care of me and providing for me like a Good Shepherd.
He is so very good.
Blessings to you!
Angela Dolbear is the author of contemporary Christian novels, such as THE GARDEN KEY Series and THE TORMENTOR’S TALE, as well as many short stories. Her novels are available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook formats. Angela writes real, relatable, and reverent fiction. She loves reading, writing prose, and writing and recording music in her studio in Nashville, TN—listen to her latest album STORMS on your favorite music streaming service. Please drop by and sign up for news, read the latest stories, and hear new original music at http://www.angeladolbear.com/subscribe.htm.