Hurricane Closet

We had the wine ready.

My sister and her family lived in Panama City Beach and came to ride out the storm with us at our house in Panama City. We figured we would lose power, but that would be the worst of it.

The night before the storm we rode around town to see if everyone had evacuated. They hadn’t. Everyone was still at home. My husband told me I was being nervous for no reason.

The day of the hurricane we slept until 9 a.m. The lights began to flicker at 11:30 a.m. Then the windows started shaking.

We were scared but I didn’t want the kids to see how scared we were.

We heard a sound. Like a faucet running. It was the water pouring into the kitchen.

We all crammed into a small closet. There were seven people and two dogs in that tiny closet.

I prayed and asked God to save us. I told him that I would be a better person.

The normally active dogs were completely still.

My brother-in-law had cell phone reception and his friend was sending weather updates. We still had a long time to go until the storm passed.

My husband grabbed a twin mattress and placed them in front of the closet doors to protect us. The water was rising around us.

We were cold, wet, and scared.

Then part of the roof came off. We told the kids not to look up. We covered their heads in case something fell on us.

After it was over, we all went out and got into my husband’s truck. From that vantage point we could see the utter destruction.

Our entire roof had come off except the roof over the tiny closet we were hiding in.

Incredible, right? God answered our prayer that day.

We sat in the truck and cried. All of us.

More of our neighbors came outside. We began going door to door knocking and checking on people. We stayed the first night with a neighbor. Their house was almost untouched. It is hard to understand why some had total devastation and others didn’t.

My sister’s house in Panama City Beach was fine. We stayed with her.

We needed to uphold our promise we made to God that day. My husband and I began volunteering at our church St. Dominic’s. They are the only Catholic church in Panama City that offers a Spanish Mass. This storm was especially hard for the Spanish speaking community. The Catholic church and Catholic Charities made sure everyone received help. No matter what.

We spent every day after the storm volunteering. On Sunday’s we partnered with the Spanish community and donated all the hot meals to Hurricane Michael victims. Parishioners and non-parishioners. Anyone who showed up who needed a warm meal.

It was a beautiful thing to be there. Helping others.

I believe it was our commitment to helping others and our faith in God that we were able to settle with FEMA pretty early on.

We needed a place to stay because my husband and I both had to go back to work. There was an advertisement on Facebook for townhome.

It was too good to be true. It had to be a scam.

We showed up 30 minutes before the open house was scheduled to begin. There were 10 other families there waiting to be interviewed as well. The owner was a single mom who was in the military and was being reassigned. She interviewed us and decided we could rent her home. I couldn’t believe. She is a blessing to us.

Now we are focused on helping others as much as we can. We all want to get back to normal.”