Blessings Disguised

As life or luck would have it, our basement flooded. Richard had been gone all week for High Adventure Camp. Everything seemed fine and I left to spend the night at my parent's house. Richard got back the next day and we drove back home together to find water all over our main floor kitchen, 2-3 inches of standing water in the basement and dripping coming from all the air vents. We were in complete shock. We soon discovered it was a leak in the tube on the back of our fridge. A minuscule, hairline crack had caused SO much trouble.

Here is a before of our newly finished store room. The only room in our basement that we had painted and fixed up.

It's hard to see it, but the floor is soaked.

The water had been spraying and building up a resevoir between the floors and finally gave way in several places on the ceiling.

It made me sick to see all our hard work peeling away from the walls and ceilings.

Remember that High Adventure Richard had been on? Those boys and leaders had had quite the growing experience. It was physically taxing, many had suffered from heat exhaustion and had been in rough shape and had witnessed miracles and the priesthood of God at work. They had only just returned home. But guess who our rescuers were? Those same boys and their dads. I was already feeling stressed and emotional from the shock of it all, but to see these young men march in and dig us out with smiles on their faces made me overwhelmed beyond words. Something happened to all of them at camp. They came back bonded in a way one seldom sees. But if it took our flooded basement to get to see it, I'll take it.

We look forward to the day we get to move all of our stuff back from the garage to our basement. Then it will be on to replacing wood floors and a kitchen remodel (if we can swing it--here's hoping)

 This one is hard to see, too, but there's bubbling paint all the way down the wall.

 Rippled wood floors.

The fans were by far the worst part of the whole ordeal. LOUD is an understatement. Try pounding, piercing, incessant, infuriating, never-ending noise. Thankfully it was summer and we were able to spend a week and a half, eating and playing almost entirely out of doors.

  

Everything was and in some ways still is a mess and we've been in disarray for months. But it is slowly coming back together. As much of a headache as it has been, we feel it is truly a blessing. Insurance is covering the repairs and we are essentially getting a new basement and wood floor. It was a distant dream to get all the rooms painted and updated but it wasn't likely to happen anytime soon and there's no way we could have done it all at once. And people have been so good to us. Meals, babysitting, offers to help in any way have been such a blessing and we are grateful.