From the moment we walked through the flood waters to get in the john boat to leave our house that rainy night, the blessings to us was apparent. We were alive and healthy. Most of our pets made it out alive. Granted as I looked back at our house and garage as they were flooded, I was heartbroken. This had been home for 28 years. Both our kids grew up here. One of our dogs just drowned. Now as Jennifer, Allison and I held what few belongings we could carry with us along with the three cats and our lone surviving dog, Bella, the trauma was more than what blessings we could see at the moment. Once we arrived at the neighbor’s house where they offered us shelter our long journey of recovery began. The old and familiar was washed away, literally.

I went out again to help rescue some neighbors but was back soon due to exhaustion. I went through what we left the house with to inventory what we had. As I pulled a stack of books out of a backpack I noticed all but one was soaked through and through. The one book was dry as a bone and looked like it had not even been where there was high humidly, it was the Bible. This was a sign to me that all was OK. Even though everything around us was chaos, it was really under control through our Faith in Christ.

As I reflect back six months later, we stayed at six different places where we were invited, pets and all. Some places we stayed a few hours, others we stayed a couple of months. We are grateful for each place we were welcomed.
We had a lot of people to reach out to us to help with the house, take and wash what clothes we could salvage and keep paintings for us. Others reached out and asked what we needed and provided us money, clothes, and every day needs like tooth brushes/paste, shampoo etc... Every bit of that was a true blessing and I know God will bless everyone who stepped up for us.

Our insurance was good to us. I had called to report the claim on the flood before we evacuated. During the conversation they asked me how deep the water was. I responded that it was ankle deep when I called but was now waist deep. The insurance person told us to call back because we needed to leave our house immediately. By calling in that early we were at the top of the list to get adjusters out to us. The adjusters gave us all but a small amount of our full policy. Since we had our full amount due us from our insurance, we were able to hire a contractor to start rebuilding the house. We were able to get a jump on most people who were rebuilding their houses.

During this time after the flood I would keep people updated with our recovery over social media and along the way there were many times they reached out to help in their way. I even had some of my car project parts restored for free. What a cool blessing that was for me!

Today we are living in our house which the interior is complete. The outside still needs work and the garage is a work in progress. Last week we had several boxes delivered and when I opened them, they are garage tools that were bought for me with no sign of who bought them. I am extremely blessed that someone would go out of their way to do this for me. May God richly Bless them!

Recently I was interviewed by Fox26 TV in Houston. I summed up that interview with “…..People helping people, strangers helping strangers. It is all good! The Blessings among the tragedy.”