Gloriousness

So, unbeknownst to me, during my sleep last night, parts of Long Island got about 13 inches of rain during a 6 hour window.  It shut down the LIE and quite a few other important roadways and broke a few rain records as well.  And strangely, it was a stand-alone storm.  It didn’t accompany a hurricane and I don’t think that anyone really knew it was coming.  At least I’m guessing that the people stranded in partially submerged cars didn’t see it coming, otherwise they would have stayed home.

All that being said, though we had decided to cancel our evening youth group at the beach, last minute after the skies parted and the sun came out we decided to un-cancel it.  Ellee brought a friend and we all met up with some brave souls who decided to come along with us.

Sadly, our beautiful beach was in pretty bad shape.

And in a strange turn of events, when the waters receded, they left this.  I’m still not quite sure what it was, but it smelled really bad and was pretty gross to walk through.

However, it was all worth it, because on the other side was sheer gloriousness.

The ocean was a mad rush of unsettled, crashing waves.  And they were quite spectacular.

We stayed only near the very edge of the water, because it was beautifully angry and dangerous.

I have to be honest, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from it.  It’s amazing the emotion that you see in nature.  It was powerful and something that I will remember for a long time.

For the record, I wasn’t the only one capturing shots of the epic waters.

Anyhow, we hung out for awhile.

Before heading up to the shore.

And when the clouds parted again,

We met up for some devotions before heading home.  The timing was perfect, as more rain clouds rolled in right as we finished up.

I’m so thankful that we weren’t directly hit by the majority of the rain and my heart definitely goes out to those who were affected by it.