June 23, 2016
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 5 years since that day we all realized we were living through an event no one alive had seen and that Mother Nature chose violence that day she awoke…at least for those of us in West Virginia. My worry that morning of another strong thunderstorm underneath those huge trees was naive. Unbeknownst to me, the lightning and wind were the least of our worries. I always expressed my worry to Charlie when the river would spill out of its banks that it would reach the house, but he reassured me that it never had come close before and we’ve seen some terrible floods in the area in the past. He had no way of knowing that I did need to worry that day, along with so many others who never saw this level of devastation coming. The 100-year flood turned into the 1,000-year flood that day. That’s the result of 8-10″ of rain in just a few short hours.
My sister lived next door to us with her husband and two kids. What used to be our relaxing happy places were quickly filling with water. As we stood in our rain boots wondering what on earth do we do, all we could decide on was to try and keep the kids calm and see what happens. Fortunately for her, she had a second level to her home. We did not. So once the river began to breach the bank behind the house, I had no choice but to seek shelter next door at Charlie’s parents’ home. All brick and an upstairs for shelter if needed. I didn’t even have time to grab my cat or diapers. Don’t worry, she floated on the couch all night and lived happily for 4 additional years after that day. That night and the next day we attempted potty training on Callahan which really didn’t work, but hey, we had very few choices. Instead, I wrapped him in his Papaw’s old t-shirts and pinned them like an old cloth diaper. The river rose so quickly, the rescue crew became trapped on the road above the house for the entire night and the following day. We ended up having to move everyone to the upstairs as the river crept into the downstairs after having filled their basement. So me and the boys, along with my in-laws, and Bella their dog, found our shelter in the bedrooms upstairs of their family home.
They say time flies when you have children, that the days are long but the years are short. That was the longest day of our lives. The minutes crept by and the river kept rising. I watched the river creep closer and closer to my home, wondering when it would crest. It wouldn’t stop until it filled the house with 4 feet of water. I didn’t realize how much devastation there would be until Charlie was finally able to get in touch with me and when I told him where the water line was on the house his response was, “Are you serious? We’re going to have to start over. There’s not going to be much we can save or keep.” That kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. I kept thinking “ok it’s only about halfway up in the house we can save a lot of things”, but the reality was what we were able to salvage were pieces mere of the life we had only begun to create together. Furniture, photos, clothes, dishes, toys….you name it we lost it. But you notice I didn’t say brother, sister, mom, dad, child, husband….or even cat for that matter. All we had lost were things. Things that could be replaced. Sure it had hurt to know I lost the boys’ baby books, but thanks to Facebook I can go back to posts years prior and document first steps, first tooth, first words. Yes, we lost our wedding album, but my genius self had purchased a smaller version for my mom and she gave that to me to replace mine. Everything we lost could be replaced and we didn’t lose the ones who meant the most to us. Our first rainbow.
Once the river receded enough that I could safely make it into my house, my father-in-law, Ted, and I went to see the damage and rescue the cat. I was so thankful that I could see the river receding, gauging it by how many of my pink roses I could see as it went down, I never expected to be so emotional when I finally got the front door open. I somewhat lost it and looking back now, I’m not sure why I was trying to hold it together. Probably because I knew if I let myself collapse at that moment, I’d never make it through the long days ahead. Nothing was where it belonged. Furniture turned over, kids toys in the hallway (which let’s be honest, any given day that’s where it could have been anyway), mud everywhere. My cat was meowing under a blanket on the couch. She hates water. I gathered some things I knew the boys would need and want, scooped up the cat, and began the process of picking up the pieces. Charlie finally was able to make it home, my sister and her family were able to make it out and over to us, the recovery process had begun. The rainbow after the storm.
The next several days were spent shoveling all of our ruined things into a giant pile in the front yard. The number of people who came to help will never cease to amaze me. Childhood friends, new friends, wedding clients turned friends, family, strangers. It was a different type of river flowing through our wrecked lives of help and love from so many. I spent hours bleaching, washing, and rinsing toys for the boys. My sisters-in-law spent hours in the laundromat washing as many of our clothes as they could so we could have something to wear and dress the boys in. My brother helped to clear our garage which had the absolute heaviest items in that house. Coworkers of my husbands drove from great distances to help us and hug us. The help was nice but the hugs were what sustained me. My dad, who mind you had just lost his second brother in a short timeframe and helping to care for my grandmother plus my mom who was getting sicker each day, found a way to come up and shovel mud, haul away items for safekeeping, and help any way possible. All the while my boys had to stay sheltered upstairs at their grandparents, watching us from the window and entertaining themselves as we couldn’t put them in any sort of danger with the cleanup process. If you don’t know what’s in floodwater, just research it and you’ll understand. We made sure to get our tetanus shots. I’m thankful they had a place to stay safe and got to watch humanity at its finest. Let’s face it, our children today haven’t seen the best in people, but those weeks after the flood, my sons did. They found a rainbow.
Not all hope was lost. Even on the days we were exhausted and felt like we were putting more in the trash pile than the keep pile, little flickers of light shone through. The biggest one for me was our family Bible. The very Bible that was given to us on our wedding day by the very uncle I mentioned just previously that we lost a couple of weeks prior. It was the only item I was upset about losing and being that it sat on the bottom shelf of my nightstand in my bedroom I knew it had to be ruined. How can something sit in floodwater for at least 24 hours and be ok? After finally digging our way to the back of the house where the bedroom was located, Charlie called to me asking if I wanted the Bible since he knew how upset I was over it. God works in strange ways though and believe me, He works on our behalf so often. As I began to take the Bible out of the box, the box simply crumbled away from being so water-soaked, but not the Bible. Not one single drop of water was on our Bible. Nor in it. The only signs of a flood were Noah’s story within and the one smudge of mud I placed on one of the pages because I was shaking so much at the fact it was dry I couldn’t take my gloves off quickly enough to flip through the pages. That Bible sits in the living room in our new home today. One smudge of mud and reminds me of my uncle who gifted it to us and God who gave us new life. Another rainbow.
One week to the day after the flood my mom called while I was cleaning up more of our lives, this time in our garage. I’ll never forget that call, who was there, the weather, the way the garage looked, what I was doing. Her biopsy came back and it was Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I’d had enough at that point. I just remember saying no, no. At that point, I thought no this can’t be right. Not in the middle of all of this. I mean I’d spent days crying wondering what was wrong with my mom and begging God to fix it. He would in His time, but in my mind, this wasn’t being fixed. A cancer diagnosis. I sat there and cried in my muddy garage. That day, Gateway Church from St. Albans, WV had arrived and built us a storage shed to hold the things we had saved. They helped us load everything also. I remember one girl just patted me on the back and said it will be ok. Which she was right, but she was meaning the flood, not the conversation I had just had with my mom. After a month in the hospital, several radiation and chemo treatments, a tracheotomy, hair loss, weight loss, sense of security lost, she made it through and has been cancer-free going on 5 years. At the time though it was the start of a new trial and hard to find the light, let alone another rainbow.
We spent the next 4 months living with Charlie’s sister, Tedra, in her home which was for sale in Scott Depot, WV. She had moved to Louisville, KY for work and came in on weekends until she could sell the house. She said she was so frustrated and couldn’t understand why it hadn’t sold yet but maybe this was the purpose for that frustration and she was meant to help us. That was certainly her purpose for those 4 months. We got to know a sister/sister-in-law/aunt we never would have had it not been for the flood and her being our rescuer. She laughed with us, cried with us, sheltered us, fed us, opened her home to us, and changed us. We moved into our camper that October and she sold her house shortly after. God’s timing. We spent one more Christmas with her and that’s all we got. Tedra got sick that January and passed away shortly after. Charlie was angry and questioned the reasoning behind the flood until we lost Tedra. After that, he was thankful for all the hardships. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have known his sister like he did when she left us. Another trial with another rainbow.
We spent 15 months in our camper as a family of 4 plus the cat. Don’t get me wrong, this camper is nice and we didn’t lose it to the floodwaters so we were happy. I found a use for every single inch of space in that camper. I was baffled at how this little family of 4 had just lost so much in a flood but ran out of room in that camper so quickly. It was cozy and we loved it. We had a tiny Christmas tree that first Christmas and put a real, full-size tree outside of the camper on the second one. In that camper we began a homeschool journey, made dozens of plans to build a new home which we scrapped when we bought our forever home, watched countless WWE episodes and pay-per-views, I built a Han Solo frozen in carbonite costume, learned how to cook my mom’s recipe of baked steak, among countless other antics which turned into memories. We lost two family members while in that living situation, watched my mom’s head get shaved due to the increasing hair loss from chemo, watched it begin to grow back, celebrated birthdays, saved money, potty trained Callahan, and so much more. That camper has always been home away from home, but for 15 months it was just simply home. I put the Jack Johnson lyrics on the wall “home is wherever we are if there’s love here too”. We stand by that motto. After losing the comfort of home in the house in which we lived, we found that no matter where it was, as long as we were together, that was home. We call this new house our forever home but we don’t truly know if this is forever. As long as we stick together, it’s home.
It is said that God will give us no more than we can handle. I’m not sure who came up with this mindset, but I couldn’t disagree more with whoever said it. June 23, 2016 was far more than I was able to handle. More than most of us could. I simply turned to Him and asked that He handle it for us and show us the way, and that’s exactly what He did. It was a Isaiah 41:10 playing out in real life. It was us literally praising Him through the storm knowing He is Who got us through those hard moments. He used so many people for His work during those weeks. I kept a list of every person who showed up to help, reached out to check on us, sent money and supplies, fed us, or simply just showed up with hugs and prayers. Every single part of that helped us to recover and move forward. God sent each one of you all to us and for that, I am forever grateful.
In the 5 years since the flood we have lost and gained a lot. Lost things, loved ones, comfort, security, peace of mind, weight, teeth (the boys), friends. In these past five years, we’ve gained so much more. One of which is our sweet boy Crew Samuel. He isn’t a rainbow baby in the sense of having lost a child during pregnancy before his conception, but he’s our rainbow after five years of storms and trials. Often we refer to live pre-flood and life post-flood. However, we’ve vowed that with this 5-year flood-iversary, the reference to the flood ends. It shaped who we are today, yes. It gave us many lessons and taught us to value what’s important. But no longer does that raging river from that day in June have a hold over us. In fact, there’s still a love for that river. How could I despise something that I grew up swimming and fishing in? Something that is a symbol of our heritage? Something that brought us some of the greatest blessings, no matter how messy it brought them? Alison Krauss sings a song called River in the Rain and it speaks exactly how we feel about the river…
“But sometimes in a time of trouble
When you’re out of hand and your muddy bubbles
Roll across my floor
Carryin’ away the things I treasure
Hell there ain’t no way to measure
Why I love you more than I did the day before”
So…here’s to 5 years of change…changed homes, lives, minds, hearts, souls. Here’s to moving forward and leaving the pain behind. Here’s to never forgetting, but always forgiving.
XOXO
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