Humble your Heart

As I scroll through the pictures now, the ones my son took while we huddled under a conference room table at the Lynn Haven police station, I am in awe.

This is the hurricane through his eyes. It will one day be a part of his testimony. Pictures of people praying. Strangers at the time, but now family.

He was so brave.

My son insisted on wearing his SWAT gear police costume. My husband is a Lynn Haven Police Officer and he wants to be just like him.

My husband was on mandatory duty during the hurricane and we decided to ride out the storm with him at the Lynn Haven Police Department.

The night before the storm we slept on the floor in his office, or tried too, while my husband and his fellow officers did everything they could to prepare for the storm.

We have three children – ages 5, 2 and 7 months.

The next morning, we stood in the commission hall with the other families that had come to ride out the storm.
It was an old church steeple attached to the building with large windows and glass doors.We looked outside and saw the rain pouring down – sideways.

The wind sounded like a freight train passing by. We could see the trees bend and snap in half. The rain and mist looked like milk making it difficult to see at any distance. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

There was a huge commercial generator hooked up to the building but the strong winds were choking it out. The lights would flicker on and off.

The glass windows began to rattle and shake. We retreated into the training room of the police department.
My husband couldn’t sit with us because he was on duty but we passed the time chatting with one of the city commissioners and his family.

We were sitting up against a wall and we heard loud booms and things hitting the building. It was the windows of the steeple on the other side of the wall being sucked out.

A girl we had just met was holding my 7-month old daughter while I tried to entertain our 5 and 2-year-old so they wouldn’t be frightened.

I remember looking over and watching her cover my daughters head as the sound rang through our ears. Her reflexes were so parental and protective.

The glass shattered and the large air conditioning vents ripped off of the roof.The wind ripped through the building.
The air was thick and we could smell diesel fuel. Our ears were popping because of the continuous pressure changes.

The wall started to crumble. We shuffled down the hallway to my husband’s office.

Myself and our three children got under his desk. Then the roof ripped off and water started pouring in.

His computer was still plugged in and all I could think of was that we were going to be electrocuted.
My husband ran in the room and ripped the computer and the cords out of the wall.

We moved again to a new conference room. We crammed ourselves under the large table. There were 10 people sitting shoulder to shoulder, some panicking and crying hysterically.

During this truly traumatic event my 5-year-old son seemed to be somewhat calm. He took pictures and played songs from his Vacation Bible School that I had saved on my phone. He would show videos to everyone. I think it took our minds off what was going on outside and helped everyone in the room. He was so brave

It seemed as if the hurricane would never let up. We were in the outer wall of the hurricane for almost four hours and never received relief from the eye.

It became more and more intense and the roof was lifting up and down. I began to think that we might not make it out of here.

Finally, around 4 p.m., the winds let down, it was over and we were able open the doors to the outside. It was such a relief.

I have never seen my husband on the job before. Once it was safe, I watched all of the police officers jump into action.

You couldn’t help but be caught up in their energy to go out and help. They put on rain coats and jumped on 4-wheelers, side by sides, and others on foot to canvas the town to check on the damage and search for people.
The officers did everything they could do to clear a path to get in and out of the immediate area.

None of the officer’s radios worked and nobody’s phones worked.

My husband and I had cell phones with AT&T service, which we gave up to all of the city officials to use, to get in touch with the Emergency Operations Center.

My husband came back to the police station around 7:30 p.m. and told me we were moving to the Southerland Event Center. The city commissioner and his family help me load up the kids and our personal items into my truck.

My husband, driving a side by side, escorted us to the Southerland Event Center for shelter. I couldn’t believe what I saw during that short drive. Trees, debris, power poles and water, it looked like a war zone. Our town was destroyed.

We set up cots when we arrived, but no one could really sleep. Around 11 p.m. my son started having an asthma attack. We had his nebulizer but there was no power. I reached out to an officer who told me the EMS was not running and the hospitals were not functional.

My husband’s Lieutenant came to the rescue with a small generator. We hooked up my son’s nebulizer up to it and gave him his breathing treatment.

All of the police officers were working tirelessly. They would go out and administer aid to people and then come back to sleep for an hour or two before heading back out again.

As time went on people figured out where the police officers had congregated and they would walk up and ask for help. Some needed supplies, others needed medical attention.

One person approached my husband and asked how long it would take an ambulance to show up and pick up their family member who had died. That is when it really hit home how bad it was.

It was so surreal and the lack of sleep didn’t help. It was almost like a bad dream that you couldn’t wake from.
My kids and I helped cook meals and make sandwiches for the first responders. A group of us ended up cooking over 400 meals for the police force, firefighters and anyone who needed one.

It was good to keep busy, it seemed that the work kept us going.

The Saturday after the storm we needed to find somewhere else to go. The Southerland Event Center was needed for other purposes.

After a tireless effort by the officers and the City Manager to seek shelter for the first responders, we made plans to stay at a hotel in Panama City Beach.

As we drove through the city of Lynn Haven and Panama City all you could see was destruction. It was about 6:00 p.m. when we approached the Hathaway bridge, in front of me you could start to see street lights and businesses illuminating the drive, but when I looked in my rear view mirror, it was pitch black.

We finally made it to one of the only hotels open in the area. My husband made sure his guys were checked in and then unloaded our belongings only to find out this place was not livable and was crawling with roaches. This is the moment that I broke down. All of it hit me at once and I could not help but cry.

I called my grandmother and cried. So many relatives poured love into my family after the storm. They combined their resources and rented a clean place for us to stay in Destin.

My husband was making the four-hour round-trip drive between Destin and Panama City six days a week. He said it was worth it to keep our babies in suitable living conditions.

On my husband’s first day off since the storm he said we needed a touch of normalcy and he was craving a steak.
We sat at our table at Longhorn-steakhouse in Destin discussing our post-hurricane plans and conversations we had with our insurance company.

We asked for our bill and our waiter told us a woman, who had overheard us talking, had paid our bill. My husband was overwhelmed with gratitude and he cried right there in Longhorn steak house. I have never really seen him cry before, except maybe during the birth of our children. It was a simple act of kindness, but it was a vibrant reminder of God showing us His grace. The grace that we had experienced many times over the last few days.

We had made it out alive. His grace.

The kids were ok. His grace.

We had a place to live. His grace.

Now, a free steak dinner, definitely His grace.

We have had three adjusters and two inspectors at our house. The progress is slow. It is humbling to realize how little you can actually live with. We don’t actually ‘need’ all of the things we accumulate. This situation has definitely tested us but there is so much positive that has and will continue to come from it.