Keeping Our Heads Above Water......Chapter 3

December 30, 2015

There is so much I want and NEED to tell you about Chapter 3, that I'm finding it hard to know where to start.

 So, with grateful tears in my eyes as I type this,  I'll start where Day 3 started.....holding hands in a circle in a very wet driveway to pray before the day started with at least 10 people showing up at 8:00 am from our church, our community, our neighborhood, all to work.....on our house....for free.....because they love us.

Dear Amazing and Wonderful Heavenly Father.....This storm that was meant to hurt us, has only blessed us....over and over again as I look at the faces of these people who have arrived at my doorstep on their holiday vacation, because they have hearts full of compassion and love.  Your love in them, Father....and these tears falling off my cheeks right now are tears of JOY.....not worry....not fear....not loss.....but pure Joy.  And I thank You for each and every one of these people You have placed at our doorstep this week....Dean, Melissa, Corrine, Coleman, Cameron, Nick, Brent, Zach, Dan, Cindy, Terri, Brian, Becky, Larry, Beau, Beau's Dad, Troy, Doug, Jack, Ellen, Brady and many others.  I know no other words other than "Thank You.....Thank You."

Yesterday is a blur.....my Supervisor Dean organized these guys to measure up 2' on every single wall in our house....make a chalk line....knock out the Sheetrock....haul the Sheetrock to the ugly green canoe and take it to higher ground.

This went on all day....while my girls, Terri, Ellen, Cindy and I went through my very, very embarrassing messy closets and made decisions on what was salvageable and what wasn't.   There's an intimacy about sharing that one closet in your house where you open the door, throw items in and shut it real fast and I think as close as these friends and I were before, we're closer now because they visited this closet of mine.

There were hard things to let go of.  And I'm not talking about expensive clocks or antique pieces of great value.  I'm talking about my very first doll...her name was Softie....same as my nickname my Dad gave me when I was born....who I had to let go of yesterday.  It was tough to put her in the unsalvageable bag.  Very hard.

And then there was our company purged files in a different closet that couldn't be saved....and I pray a second prayer of never getting audited.

And I'm going to repeat the scripture I mentioned yesterday to you....Genesis 50:20, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good."  Let me just say friends, as I stand in a home that barely resembles the home it was this time last week, I am humbled...because so much GOOD has come from these last three days.  Relationships I thought were dead, have now been restored.  New friendships have been formed.  Existing friendships are stronger.  And in my book, relationships are far more important than a Softie doll or a little missing Sheetrock.

And at the end of the day, when all the workers have left and I'm standing in the middle of what would appear a sheer mess but all I can see is sheer LOVE everywhere I look, another truck pulls up with two men in it who just drove in from Dallas after working a full days work, to work a little longer on my house....because they love.

And I'm beyond humbled......