Faith through fire (or rather, water)

Last year's lesson that God is good and loving "no matter" and even "because of" our flood was still ringing in my ears when I woke Wednesday, August 23rd.  

I went to work out that morning and discussed with a friend what God had done the previous year...never knowing what God was about to do.  By midday when I met with the realtor who would be listing our house a week later, most of Houston had heard about the coming hurricane.  We talked about how we would touch base again Monday-- after the storm.  I think that day she was more nervous for me about potential flooding than I was.  

But by Thursday morning, my panic started to set in.  I went to the grocery store at 6 am and found the entire store already ransacked of all water, soup, canned goods etc...  I let my environment dictate my heart.  I shopped based on the price of canned goods per inch they would raise our furniture.  By the time I got to checkout, every bottle of water in the store was gone (I had gotten one of the 5 or 6 last packs of water) and I was extremely fragile emotionally.  The biggest battle was going on inside of me.  I was feeling fearful.  Not just a little.  As I let the thoughts enter, sit down, and take up residence in my mind, the heart started to follow.  I suddenly understood my daughter's irrational fear.  God taught me in those moments to have great compassion for her.  But I was also a bundle of emotions because I knew that as a believer, living in fear was the opposite of trust.  It was denying a sufficient God.  The emotions lay just below the surface until I got to checkout.  I don't even remember the comment that was made that started the whole thing, but as a cashier named Elizabeth declared the Word of God out loud to me, I just burst into tears.  I couldn't control it.  I was weeping.  As I was checking out.  In the middle of Kroger.  With impatient people lined up behind me.  The cashier continued to speak God's truth over me.  I wept the more because I have God's hope and yet was still wracked by waves of fear.  She took the time to come around and hug me.  I have never seen this woman before, possibly never will again (life will never be the same for that area).  God used her in my life to calm me and refocus me on His truth.  I had a choice to make.  Was I going to trust Him (remember my past history and pertinent memorial stones just 16 months earlier)? or was I going to be held captive by fear?  My Bible reading that morning would be ringing through my head for the next weeks to come... 

Psalm 34:4-8
"I sought the Lord, and He heard me,
And delivered me from all my fears.
They looked to Him and were radiant,
And their faces were not ashamed.
This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him,
And saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him,
And delivers them.
O, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him."

I began begging the Lord for deliverance.  Deliverance from my fears.  For His angel to encamp around our house and physically deliver us from the waters.

Friday came and went.  I spent the day going about a moderately normal life and trying to hunt down a bit more water.  What were the odds we'd flood again?  There were so many unknowns.  Even the weathermen would not predict the hurricane's exact path nor the aftermath thereof.

Saturday morning I awoke at 5 am.  Desperately fighting to remain in God's perfect peace despite the potential for a great storm.  I decided that sitting and doing nothing was far worse than keeping myself busy.  Home selling staged photos or no photos the next week, I began carrying small items upstairs.  Around 8 am I begged Michael to help me.  As we started with just the little stuff, it became easier and easier to just dismantle our downstairs.  We pulled out the wood Michael had bought and cut to size in order to place it with the cans I had purchased earlier in the week.  There were a few tornadoes on the ground nearby.  I was so thankful we had a dry floor to huddle on in the downstairs closet. Before bedtime, we decided to put items up on cans overnight.  And the cars on jack stands.  All three cars.  The rain had not even begun.  I felt a bit crazy as I made plans for a flood that might not even happen.  At least Noah had had God's message...  The rain began slowly--at first.  We worked all through the night.  I even spent a bit of time arranging the upstairs so we could live more comfortably--just like last time.  We worked feverishly until 4:30 am when we collapsed into bed.  Everything was done.  The bottom 12" downstairs were up as much as could be.

But at 5 am on Sunday morning, after just 30 minutes of sleep, I woke to rain and fear again.  I looked out the window and began panicking.  The street was filling up.  I called my mom and she encouraged us to get out while we could (at least I and the kids) and drive north.  I started throwing things into bags and woke up Michael.  We prayed for clarity.  The curb was visible to the left (the right is the lowest point of the road) and I figured I could get out to the left and through the back of the neighborhood.  But it was dark.  I was still packing and 15 minutes later when I looked, God made the answer abundantly clear.  The water was now over the curb and well into the yard.  Michael had gone down to consider taking the car off jack stands, and it was even worse in the driveway.  We were not going to be going anywhere for a while.  I am so thankful for that clear answer and that I did not try to drive out.  I had figured our house would be the first to flood.  After the fact, I doubt it.

Instead we turned our attentions to what we needed to do at the house.  We decided we would likely flood and with rain predicted for the next week or more, it would likely surpass the two soup can flood of the previous year.  We might even lose power (we did not lose it the previous year).  We pulled all the soup cans so we could eat if we lost power.  And I began to run around pulling things up higher.  Now the second drawers from the bottom came out.  And the second row of books on the bookshelf.

At 9:42 am the water came in through the study this time.  I was expecting it to gush in but am so thankful that at 10:30 we still only had seepage around the edge of rooms.  I couldn't work fast enough.  I took about an hour break in the middle to reassess our situation and shelter upstairs.  Last time we had counted the bricks exposed on the mailbox and watched the water slowly creep up.  This time, that wouldn't have even been possible.  Before it would be over, there would be no sign of any mailboxes for streets around.

When we started back up again, I was up to my mid-calf.  We already had more water than last time.  And with no sign of it going down (in fact, every sign it was going up as I watched the windows outside with 4" higher water than inside), I began ferrying everything I could upstairs.  I spent the next 4-5 hours in the water moving items upstairs.  The furniture was already a loss.  I kept singing as loudly as could to keep His truth in front of me, "This is the day that the Lord has made!"  It seemed only appropriate that it was Sunday.  The water crept up my legs.  It was well above my knees.  I took higher and higher drawers out and shelves upstairs.  I even decided to pull most of the pictures/artwork from the wall.  And yet, I had His hope to cling to.

around 1 pm

 around 4 pm

 (PS the cars are 18" off the ground on jackstands in the below picture)

Meanwhile, the plumbing quit working and the toilets backed up.  What had looked manageable at first, no longer looked as rosy.  This time, my husband, who had been all for hunkering down in place, was ready to go.  But it was raining heavily outside, and we had no way of getting out.  Rarely we saw boats go by, but they were completely full already.  Shouldn't we just wait it out for a bit?  We had enough food and water.  We still had power upstairs.  The kids had taken the toaster and 4-5 packages of eggo waffles and were attempting to toast all of them to eat if we lost power.  I was working downstairs and never fed them, but they munched on waffle after waffle.  Finally around 6:15 pm, Michael flagged down a solitary canoe and two men.  They agreed to wait 5 minutes while we threw needed stuff into a bag to evacuate.  I quit ferrying items upstairs.  We still had 18" until it reached the kitchen counters.  Those drawers/items would be safe, right?

As God had been calling me to trust Him and move forward to place our beautiful house on the market, He had also been preparing me for this time.  I struggled with the decision to try and sell the house.  I loved our house.  The past few hours had me trudging through about 25" of water.  With the thunderstorms and no power downstairs, the house was dark.  The water was dirty.  The furniture was dirty.  The house was torn apart and had lost all beauty.  That was my last view of the house.  When those two kind gentlemen hoisted the kids over their shoulders to get out and we waded through now almost crotch-high water, those attachments were broken.  We didn't know then, but we were moving out-- never to live there again.

The men were dressed in raincoats but nothing could keep them dry.  The rain was coming fast and sideways and there was only enough room for myself and the kids in the canoe.  Michael walked with them out through the neighborhood.  We left at around 6:30ish and were later notified that the neighborhood lost power at 10 pm.  It was not to come back on for almost a week.  And the water which the boys was wading in was becoming dangerous.  Mailboxes could not be seen, let alone the bushes in everyone's front yard.  And even worse, the current was fierce.  The men struggled to get out.  Water was up to Michael's shoulders in some parts (M is 6'2").  These brave men made one more run for the night after us and had to call it quits only 15 minutes later.  Little did we know then, the current was so bad that even boats with engines were capsizing and no one could get in or out for the next 3 1/2 days!
(as an addendum: the two stranger "angels" who ushered us out via canoe were just that.  Complete strangers.  They showed up when we needed them and disappeared just as quickly.  But God orchestrated a God-encounter a few weeks later.  I went to the post office to mail a car title but realized that I had not gotten Michael to sign it.  I had to return later in the day.  When I showed up, I was at the desk writing when a man said, "Excuse me."  I looked up.  He said, "I think I took you out in the canoe."  Sure enough.  It was one of our rescuing strangers!  What were the odds???  I wouldn't have even seen him if he hadn't gotten my attention.  I was so thrilled to be able to thank him again!)

We were dropped off at a house along Radley where the flood waters stopped.  We waited under their car port for our friends from church to come pick us up.  That house was our refuge for the moment...later to succumb to the flood waters itself.

After a little while, we received a phone call from the friend who told us he could not make it through high waters on the way to our house.  Could we walk to meet him a few blocks away?  We had evacuated with some rather heavy bags and it was pouring cold rain but we agreed.  It wasn't until later that I realized it would have been a 15-20 minute walk in good weather.  Yikes!  We weighed our options and begged a truck that had just stopped in front of the house (driven by another stranger) to carry us in his bed to meet our friend.  We did not realize that he had a full bed. And yet, he generously volunteered to let us, soaked though we were, sit inside his extended cab truck.  He ferried us to our friend.  And I literally mean ferried us.  We had not been outside our own little area.  I did not know that the water was too high for all but his very jacked up truck, and almost even for him.  He had to drive through a parking lot to even get out and he risked flooding his car out for us.  When he dropped us off on the other side of the water, we never saw him again, but I am forever thankful for this third ministering angel.

Our sweet friends brought us towels and bottles of water and snacks for the car ride to their house.  The weather was harrying.  All were a bit concerned we would not even make it back to their house.  The storm was far from over.  The Parkers so generously settled us in their bedrooms and fed us a warm dinner.  The conversation was short-lived.  After being up for almost 40 hours straight, I was dead.  I woke up a couple of times in the night wondering if the tree outside our bedroom would come down but too tired to care, I fell back asleep.  The power went out sometime in the middle of the night and we woke to more rain and the eerie quiet that comes with no power.

Because of the lack of power (and temporary plumbing issues), we decided to take some other friends up on the offer to come to their place.  They had the power we so desperately needed as we started to make phone calls/get on the computer to address pressing business.  Paul came and picked us up, and the drive to his house across town was, once again, a bit full of apprehension.  The rain was still coming down and the roads were nasty.  We arrived safely, however, and once again, thanked the Lord for a safe haven from the storm.  Little did anyone suspect then what a long stopping place this would be...

It was that first night at the Andersons that was one of the pivotal moments in our life for both Michael and myself.  We had not been at our house in 24 hours now.  I had left the house with the waters still rising.  I had hoped for the best but after a phone conversation with my mom, I realized the gravity of this storm.  We could quite easily have 6 feet of water in our house.  We could have lost everything not raised upstairs.  And with 6 feet of water and another 1 1/2-2 weeks of rain/thunderstorms predicted, we could easily lose everything upstairs also to mold before the waters could recede.  Suddenly, everything we owned was ripped from me.  I reminded myself that I had more than refugees who often only have the clothes on their backs, but even that did not encourage me.  I realized the hold that my "stuff" had on me.  Almost all for sentimental reasons, but what a reality to come face to face with!  I thought I had released everything to Christ.  Only to realize I was struggling with holding on.  What if I lost everything?  I thanked the Lord for my family, our health, and most importantly our salvation.  Once again, I realized the grip of fear.  The internal battle was fierce.  I didn't realize Michael too was struggling with the complete surrender until he voiced it late that night.  We both sat and cried as I thanked the Lord for a husband who took the lead as he prayed and surrendered all.  I knew I must follow.  And once again, I overcame the fear by complete surrender to God's plan.  All along I had been praying for physical deliverance from the flood.  What God showed me was that He had already delivered me.  My spiritual salvation was the only really important deliverance I needed. And He accomplished that with the ultimate sacrifice of his son Jesus on the cross for my sin...because of my sin.

The next few days at the Andersons are a bit of a blur.  God graciously stopped the predicted rain on Tuesday.  By Wednesday afternoon, Michael was able to borrow a canoe and canoe in to our house with Paul.

 (the cars are still on 18" of jack stands here)

There were still about 2" of water in the house but within an hour, even that was gone.  Michael rejoices that they arrived at just the right time to be able to push out a lot of the mud with the water.  (not that it wasn't still plenty muddy afterward ;) )  The boys' pictures that night were surreal.  The fridge and freezer had tipped over.  The piano was lying sideways and had fallen through the wall.  The paint was dripping off the wall like a heat torch had melted it.  Needless to say, the counters were not safe and many items that had been left on them were strewn all over the floor as the water had continued to rise.  There were cans and items everywhere.  The white couches were drenched with brown creek/sewer water.  Nothing was where it belonged.  The house looked abandoned.  I was holding my breath to see how high the water had gotten in the house.  While I had already surrendered everything, I was sorrowing over a few irreplaceable pictures and journals/letters that had not been removed from the walls/shelves because "the water would NEVER get that high!"  Michael and Paul documented the water height.  We only had 52" in the house!  Another 6" of water and most of the sentimentals would have been lost but God stopped the water just below those pictures and letters.  How kind of Him!

Yes, that is water between the double pane door glass.  And it is still there to this day, I believe.

(who knows how long the water was on, but apparently it was knocked on at some point)

The two men had to portage the canoe some of the way when leaving.  The water was receding.

On Thursday as I visited the house with Michael, I just wanted to sit (yuk--too dirty) and cry--not knowing where to begin the monumental task of reassembling our lives.  What was the next step?  How could I fathom the months and months of reconstruction?  But wait!  First, there were days and days of cleaning up/mudding out/inventorying/decisions to be made.  All this before we could even begin the next step.  And once again, I felt God's voice bring calm to my soul by reminding me that He had laid out that day's step and to trust Him with the following one.

the window sill is actually painted white

 the piano I had had since I was five was lost in the flood...and completely disintegrated as we touched it.

It is hard to remember the order of things so clearly seen now but which were not even on the horizon in the early days.  But in the upcoming days, we rejoiced to see God's mercy over and over.

As our neighborhood received power back on Friday or Saturday and the outlets dried out, not only could we plug in the necessary fans and dehumidifiers, but both COMPLETELY submerged A/C units still worked like a charm to dehumidify the now very humid air. 

Also on Friday--God provided friends, family, and strangers to help.  I cannot even begin to explain the encouragement that came with knowing there were people who cared enough to come help us!
A team of volunteers (mostly strangers) from the church were the first to arrive to help in the mud-out process.  They cut out wet dry wall, ripped out wet insulation, pulled nails, threw out trash, and began moving wet belongings from the house to the front or back yard for me to inventory.

God also provided a contractor friend who showed up with his team to tear out the bigger stuff...like the flooring.  Ryan worked under immense stress but was a definite answer to prayers.  He had just called to check in on us in the first days of the flood, not knowing the work he was getting himself in for.

And in the house inventorying, I was daunted but not alone either.  God provided my brother (who has always claimed he is older than me despite being 5 years junior; he lived up to older brother that weekend).  He took off a day from work and flew in from NC with a 24 hour notice so that he could help in any needed way.  His quick decisions and uncomplaining, kind spirit were my constant friend for the next two days.

Our Sunday school class teacher had also once again put together a huge group of class volunteers who helped with the messy and very monumental task of inventorying the garage (ie the storage unit for all that left the house to declutter before selling).  There were others who offered to take tubs and tubs of pots and pans home to sterilize.  Other volunteers also helped pack the safe/dry items into boxes from both downstairs and upstairs.  The boxes were then packed into a uhaul.  These volunteers returned for the next two days as we finished packing the entire house and loaded everything into a storage unit.

And speaking of uhaul, God had provided a large enough uhaul.  I remembered from the previous year that they were almost impossible to find.  As were storage units.  I called both within the first couple of days to procure them.  And a few days after that, both were almost impossible to find.  And God provided our second storage unit when they accidentally gave us one that was vacant but had a paying tenant.

This step of putting items into storage was another step in trusting God's future plan.  We didn't know were we would be, but we both felt God had called us away from the house.  Hadn't he told us to get ready to put it on the market?

The day of the flood, my sister called to offer a guest house that they would purchase three days later.  God's prompting to purchase that house at that time had been perfectly appointed.  It was God's perfect provision.  God had even gone before years earlier and named the street--Haven.  This house (where I type from now) has been a great haven for us from a storm and also part of God's perfect plan.

In the days preceding our temporary migration north, the Andersons continued to pour out and pour out of themselves.  They made us meals, they loved on us, they watched our kids, lent us cars and cried with us (well, I cried...maybe them not as often).  They took us into their family and became our surrogate parents.  We will always be thankful for this family and this sweet gift from the Lord.

There were many others who also watched our kids.  God provided so many volunteers, in fact, I did not have to burden anyone with more than one full day visit (with one exception).  Sweet Amy (and D) even kept the kids overnight!  I was so thankful to be able to focus all attention to the many matters at the house--or storage unit.

And the first day my kids came to the house after the flood was enough to bring me to tears.  They were outside but apparently D had gone inside without me knowing.  He came running out and burst into tears.  It was too much for me.  Check out this picture of my kids faces after first looking at the house...  I have never seen my kids so sober!

Their faces just mirrored what was on our hearts.  The happy memories at this house will be just that.  Memories.  Our time here was done.  On the day of the flood, I had spent a few minutes talking to a former neighbor who had sold his house to an investor after the last flood.  We began praying that God would provide such an opportunity.  We got in touch with his contact and received an offer a week or two later.  But meanwhile, a different neighbor just happened to be walking by and introduced us to another investor he casually knew but had never done work with.  This investor also made an offer.  We were torn.  The offer was far better, but Bryan, the 2nd investor, was an unknown quantity and the offer was still less than 1/2 of what we hoped to sell our house for days earlier.  We had been advised that the usual process is to make your acceptance contingent on insurance funding.  After much prayer and the counsel of a wise friend, we decided to accept Bryan's offer and proceed forward immediately.  We would trust that God would provide the necessary insurance funding.  We knew it was time to leave (another friend equated it to the children of Israel encamped too long in one place in the desert).

There were lots of details to sort out.  Our insurance adjustor had come once briefly but had to come back to do a full inspection.  In a God-orchestrated set of events, his camera acted up, and he was forced to come back before he had planned.  He photographed, measured and signed off. We could now sell our house.  (FEMA had confirmed that we did not need to own the house to receive the check--as long as our adjustor had come, and we owned it during the catastrophe).  So with that, we sold our house on September 22, 2017.  The week before we closed was hard emotionally.  God had released my hold on the house but memories rushed back as I walked through the rooms.  I set my face forward, said goodbye, and turned the page.

What is the next page?  We weren't sure at the time.  I knew we were to move temporarily to Sherman.  I wasn't sure how that would play out for Michael.  We were both ready for God to indicate a significant change, a change that would take us out of the Houston area.  And yet, Michael still had his job in Houston.  Michael's sister so graciously agreed to keep Michael during the week when in Houston, and he decided to drive up to Sherman each weekend while we decided the next step.

We had no car yet.  We lost all three in the flood.

God provided a car for Michael the week before we moved.  I had a harder time.  I couldn't find the car I wanted in our price range in Houston.  We were praying for provision but also wisdom and protection from the wrong car.  We experienced clear guidance in a very funny way.  We found two cars, but I was torn.  Neither were exactly what I wanted.  We came back from test driving the first car, and I was weighing through the pros and cons.  Meanwhile, I was approached by a random salesman. He asked if we were almost done looking at the car.  When I asked for another 15 minutes he said, "Actually this car sold an hour ago but we have been trying to locate it since!"  What?!?  The car had sold out from under us while we were test driving!  The second car we were interested in sold in the forty-five minutes that it took to get to the dealership.  God was making those choices quite clear!  So instead, Michael moved us up to Dallas without a car. (We would borrow my parents for a week before finding one in McKinney.)  We weren't sure how to get our stuff up to Sherman but God answered even that.  Michael had a business trip in Dallas the day before the move.  He needed the company truck to bring back evidence.  What a God-send!  He took our stuff to the house and stayed the night with my parents and then went to his job early the next morning.  He came home that night to Houston and drove us back to Sherman on Sunday.

As we were driving into midtown Dallas, we received a phone call.  It was my mom.  She was calling from Sherman to tell me that she was on her way to the ER with my dad, who was suffering severe heart failure.  I was fighting back tears.  But seeing my husband with tears, just sent me over the edge. I began weeping.  Michael put his foot on the gas to rush the hour to Sherman.  It felt like a race against time to see my dad.  And suddenly in the midst of it all, five minutes after the phone call--Abigail from the back seat, "Mommy, I'm going to throw up!" This having been said every 15 minutes along the way, it was ignored this time, until...
She did.  This in the close quarters of a very small truck.  We were not near any suburban stores, but we pulled over at a motel in the heart of midtown.  I used the restroom to clean up as much of the mess as possible and suddenly all traces of tears were gone.  God knew the timing of this couldn't be worse.  He who controls the times and seasons had for some providential reason chosen this moment for my littlest to get sick all over.  I no longer worried about rushing to see my father.  God had my father in His hands, and I was once again at peace.  God's plan was perfect.  I had to trust Him.  And God had known three weeks earlier when my sister offered us a place to stay in Sherman that this would happen that day.  In fact, He had prepared for us even as my sister was looking at houses months earlier.  He had gone well in advance to put us where we needed to be at exactly the right time.

The first few days were incredibly hard.  My dad was in extremely critical condition, and we thought we would lose him.  There was no blockage that could be fixed.  But after more than a week in two different hospitals, God chose to deliver my dad's life.  But I had learned weeks earlier...even if He hadn't, I was at peace.  God's plans are good, and He will strengthen me for what He has called me.  Today my dad is still under supervision and has a much more limited diet and lifestyle, but God is restoring.

And for the rest of God's unfolding plan...Neither of us were prepared for what happened next.  A few days before leaving Houston, we decided to look at a few houses that were currently on the market, just in case we received our insurance money and were in a position to purchase a house remotely.  I never anticipated anything coming of those few hours spent.  But instead, God prompted both Michael and I to pursue a house only a few miles from our old house in Spring.  (trust me--much higher ground! ;) )  We were ready to move to the other side of the world, but God brought us back to our own backyard.  As we proceeded forward, God continued to provide confirmation after confirmation and called us to trust Him even more deeply in the details of the contract and home purchase.  The path we took did not make human sense at times but was God's perfect and abundant provision. Here is what a friend messaged me today ~  My prayer from the beginning of this has always been that this story will be a testimony to Him and bring Him greater glory!

I Corinthians 1:27, 31 "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; ...
that, as it is written,“He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.”"

Even as I post this, we will be moving into our new house.  The path here was not one I would have planned for myself, but it has held great blessing alongside the significant pain.  And knowing it is God's design, has kept me in perfect peace (most of the time) despite the very slow, very momentary unfolding of God's plan.  He took me, a planner by nature, and showed me the peace and freedom that comes in resting in His plan.

Matthew 6:34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

So as our world turned topsy-turvy only 2 months ago, I am thankful He did not unfold His full plan from the get-go.  I am not sure I would have been on board.  ;)  And I definitely know, it would not have taught me to trust Him for every step.  I am so thankful for the lessons in daily faith.  And a God who walked with me every step of the way.  A God who loves me mightily.  A God who provided, protected and directed.  And a God who delivered...delivered me from my fears by showing me Himself.  A God who delivered me 2000 years ago on the cross.  An identical marble/wire cross to one my sister had made years ago was hanging on the wall of our new house when we walked through the first time.  That cross will remain with us to remind of a God who delivered us from the flood and ultimately from our sin.  Thanks be to God!