“Bad shape” was an understatement

My dad always has been a talker and story teller.  He has knack for embellishing the way any fisherman does.  After a fishing trip we would always ask ourselves if the fish that got away was really as big as he said it was.

“Your back porch just ripped off,” he said mid-hurricane in the few sporadic calls we got from him during the storm.  We weren’t entirely sure if we could believe him.

He had come over to our house the night before the storm. My parent’s house was in a flood zone and my mom was out of town.

The later in the evening it got, the more nervous I became. The weather man was on television crying. We had a friend in the Emergency Operations Center and his voice changed and wasn’t calm anymore.

I couldn’t shake this anxious feeling in my gut and we made the decision. We were leaving.

I literally packed for six people in five minutes.

We woke our children up and piled them into the van.  My dad said he was staying.  We drove away from the house but turned around and went back and asked him one last time to leave with us.

Nope. He was staying.
We drove to my brother’s house in Pensacola. He doesn’t usually answer his phone late at night, but tonight he did.

After the hurricane my dad said, “Your house is in pretty bad shape.”

When we were finally able to get back in “bad shape” was an understatement. We had over 50 trees down.  My husband’s truck had a tree on it.  A third of our roof and trusses had come off and there was water everywhere in the house.  The entire front door insert was laying down on the front porch.  The back door had blown in and the hurricane had blown right through the middle of our house.

Later, we found out it got worse.  My husband’s office was destroyed and my parent’s home would also have to be torn down.  

One of the last memories I had was the baby doll in my daughter’s crib. It was now covered in insulation. The lawn looked like yellow snow. The insulation was everywhere.

When our neighbors saw my dad emerge from the house, they were shocked to find out that someone was inside. They offered for him to stay with them, he refused.  I think he felt the need to protect his “little girl’s” home.  He hooked his CPAP machine up to a boat battery and slept soaking wet downstairs.

Most of our belongings in our house were destroyed. Toys, clothes and books. All gone.  My sister-in-law had written little notes in the books she had given my children as gifts. She died suddenly last summer. Losing these irreplaceable things are the hardest.

My daughter asked why we didn’t save more of her things. My son told me one night after I tucked him in that he was homesick and wanted to be back in his room. As a mother, those questions just break your heart.

At the end of the day it is just stuff. It was just shocking to lose it in that manner.

The first insurance adjuster didn’t even walk into our house. He stood outside and said it was a total loss. The desk adjuster said that it could be salvaged. The next adjuster came with a structural engineer and agreed with the first. There was nothing left to save and they will have to wipe it off the foundation.

Financially, we are not going to come out on top after all this. It will cost us twice the amount to rebuild our house to what it was before. The cost of supplies and labor has increased drastically and the timelines are months longer.  

My husband and I were born and raised in Panama City and we won’t leave. Too much of our life is here. This has always been the kind of town that takes care of people or maybe it is just the people I surround myself with. Our family and friends (both here and out of town) were amazing.  They helped us box up what we could salvage, cut trees in our yard, helped us find a rental house, they arranged for our kids to have new mattresses, their kids shared their own toys and clothes.  They brought us sheets, towels, meals, and kept our kids when we needed to work at the house or meet insurance adjusters.   A friend helped me dig through knee deep insulation just to find a painting of our house my son had done in Kindergarten.  It has an even deeper meaning to me now.  

We wouldn’t have been able to make it through all this without them and our faith in God.  I would much prefer to be on the giving end of generosity instead of the receiving end, but sometimes God wants to teach you about humility, pride, and accepting help.  It has been a difficult time, but we know that God is faithful and has already provided for us so much.