This morning at approximately 7:07 am HST, Hawaii was rocked into wakefulness by a 6.6-magnitude earthquake that centered off the Kona side of the Big Island. According to the Honolulu Advertiser, it was the “largest to rattle the islands in 23 years.”

When it happened, I was in a compromising position, sitting on the toilet in a state of semi-wakefulness when I felt the ground moving under me. When the shaking continued and intensified, I jumped up and sought out the Hubby who was at the coffee maker, staring curiously as the water swayed in the reservoir. I clung to him as the quake continued. The dishes rattled in the cupboards and I wondered if anything was going to come crashing to the ground. Luckily, nothing did and the shaking stopped.

However, shortly after, the entire state lost power.

Despite the power outage, we went to church and had an awesome service — albeit, in the dark — but the worship team (led by the fabulous youth) proceeded, unplugged and unshaken. The message, given by Pastor Clint, had words specifically for me, and I mean specifically. It always freaks me out a little when that happens, even though I shouldn’t be surprised since I prayed that the Lord would open my heart and speak to me this morning. And boy, he sure did.

After church, we went to Long’s and stood in the line outside the store. For crowd control, they were only allowing a small number of customers in at a time and you had to be escorted around the store by an employee who made a list of everything you put in your wagon and the cost of each item. We were lucky enough to obtain the very last bag of ice and they closed the store to customers right after we went in. Without electricity, the store could only process cash transactions. Between Hubby and I, we only had $17 and change, so we had to limit our purchases to ice, bottled water, and a pack of D-batteries. Luckily, that was all we needed. This taught me that we should always keep some cash on hand just in case. I often walk around with less than $20 in my wallet, usually opting to pay with my handy-dandy debit card. When there’s no electricity, it’s only a piece of plastic.

We went home, put on the radio and listened to the news coverage of the seismic event. We mostly lazed around the house, took naps, talked story, read in bed by the tiny beacon of a book light, ate bread and a can of vienna sausage for dinner and waited for the electricity to come back on.

We waited a long time. In fact, at 8:45 pm, I decided to go to sleep.

Almost exactly 15 hours since the outage, at 10:10 pm, I heard the tell-tale beep of my answering machine powering up and the digital cable box clicking on. Lights from the carport outside peeked through my vertical blinds and I saw the glowing red numbers on my alarm clock flashing from across the room. The power has been restored! Hallelujah!

With normalcy firmly back in place, I can now sleep in peace.

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