Saturday, September 2, 2017

I Can CHOOSE to be Joyful and Grateful

I can CHOOSE joy. I can CHOOSE to be grateful.

In our kitchen, I have this sign:


I put it over our stove to remind us that no matter how much, or how little, we have to eat and drink that it's enough. God will always give us just what we need.

Wednesday evening, Mark noticed a bit of water on the floor. We thought maybe the kids had spilled their cups (Have you seen O? He always has his sippy in hand) But Thursday evening, when soapy water began coming up out of the floorboards we knew it was more than that. We tracked the water to our dishwasher and began the clean-up.

We quickly ate dinner and I let some school friends know we wouldn't be meeting them the next morning. They each are amazing and offered to help right away! I took the kids over to the O'Neals and they kept them for a couple of hours so we could get the floor pulled up and the water removal started. Ben and Andrea have 4 kids and still stepped right up to throw ours in the mix!! Thank you all so so much!

We tracked the water by pulling up the floor and found that it had gone beyond our island into the living room some but not too much at all! It also had only gone though about 2/3 of the kitchen. Mark worked on that while I called the insurance company to begin our claim.

We got the floors pulled up and Mark said he was going to pick up the kids and run to Lowe's so he could get a box fan and dehumidifier. While he did that, I hopped on Facebook to see if anyone had one we could borrow (within 20 minutes 3 families came through with offers to help!) and I ran to our neighbors and our 80 something year old neighbor carried over his huge dehumidifier to help us! This was a huge blessing so that we were able to take care of the water without buying anything or having to call a company to do it for us. We wanted to be safe and to avoid mold but we didn't want to spend a fortune doing it!

We got the kids put to bed about 90 minutes later than usual and then Mark continued the clean-up process while I closed out a book party to help my September sales stats. We were up until midnight but we got most of it done.

Crazy nights like this help me to remember that we are truly so blessed to have so many friends and neighbors who come through for us. Both Mark and I have a hard time asking for help and we like to be the ones giving to others and sometimes it takes an emergency like this to force us to accept help.

The adjuster came out Friday afternoon and we have the claim process started as much as we can. Things are pretty much on hold over the holiday weekend but Mark got the stove and oven moved back in the kitchen so I can cook with more than the toaster and crock-pot. Our fridge is in the hallway and the kids think that is hilarious! Both of the kids love the concrete floor in the kitchen and the fact that everything is all moved around and that really made me happy to see their joy in the chaos.

For now our kitchen looks like this but as I see news-footage from Texas
our kitchen flooding doesn't seem like that big of a deal at all. 

It's going to be a bit of a mess for awhile while we wait for insurance and then for the actual flooring to come in but I hope that we can think of it all as a fun adventure! May we always choose to be grateful and joyful.

"Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, 
for this is God's will for you to belong to Christ Jesus." - 1 Thessalonians 5:16-81

No comments: