Dark Clouds, Silver Linings

Here is a mini update…..

Our daughter Kate’s house flooded and their family of six moved into our empty nester house about a month ago. The kids are 9, 4, 3 and 3 months.

I am having surgery on Thursday and our goal was to help them get their house put back together so that they could move in this past weekend and I could do what I needed to do to prepare for surgery.

Hours (okay, days) were spent cleaning up from the flood (mostly my husband and Kate’s fiancé), replacing dry wall and insulation and painting. Then, Tuesday morning, the day the carpet was scheduled to be installed, we had another hard rain and the house flooded all over again. Worse this time.

I had a meltdown on Wednesday. A complete and full blown 12 hour meltdown.

I woke up Thursday with a new burst of energy and only positive thoughts.

Kate’s random notes she left me around the house helped too!

These last several days have been emotional and tiring, but they have also been filled with wonderful things from wonderful people.

Several of our friends helped with the clean up and it was great to have them there. There were a lot of emotions in knowing that we had to clean up all over again and having our friends there to help eased the feelings of being overwhelmed.

A friend of mine called to tell me that her mom had two recliners, a coffee table and two dressers that she could donate to Kate and Shelby.

Another friend let me know that she had a friend that needed to get rid of some furniture over the weekend and that Kate and Shelby could have it if they could come pick it up. The were able to get two more dressers!

Kate and Shelby found a nice leather couch on craigslist for $200!

The American Red Cross was interviewing the people on their street yesterday (17 houses were affected by this flood) and after seeing Kate and Shelby’s house, American Red Cross gave them $750!

Shelby’s van was totaled in the flood. A past co-worker of Kate’s called to tell her that they had recently purchased a new car, but still had the older car. They were going to sell it, but wanted to sell it to Kate for $4000.00 if she was interested. The car has a blue book value of around $9,000! Now they have a car!!

Their church is looking for mattresses for the kids beds and no doubt they will find them.

The house has a long way to go but this dark cloud looming over us really does seem to have a silver lining.

Kate and Shelby moved into his parents house on Saturday. I hated to see them have to move yet again. Kate insisted that I have the house to myself to recover after surgery and Shelby’s parents live much closer to where Kate and Shelby live and it will much more convenient and they will spend much less time in the car driving.

The mom part of me really wanted them to just be able to stay here until the house is done, but a big part of me also knows that recovery will be much easier with just Mike and I in the house.

It’s been a full house and I loved having them here. Knowing surgery is around the corner brought a whole new perspective to having a houseful of family.

We have been reminded daily of how many wonderful people there are out there.

Our prayers go out to those of you that are in Houston or have loved ones is Houston. We can not begin to imagine what it must be like to be going through what they are all experiencing right now.

Prayers for strength, silver linings and the kindness of others to help them get through all that they have yet to face.