tablets of human hearts

Day 18

This morning I drove over to Hancock School District office to verify the start of school. All the Hancock schools north of I10 will be starting September 30^th. The office did recommend that we drive the kids the first day, as the schools will still be figuring out the busing situation. I also stopped by Jonny’s after school daycare. Unfortunately, they will not reopen and their space is already leased to someone else. So we’ll have to look for after school care for him again.

As I drove through the Kiln (the town to the northwest of Diamondhead) I saw more hurricane damage. A mobile home that once sat in an open field looked like it had been rolled across the field and smashed to pieces in the woods across the road. A storage place had been flooded and people were starting to pull out their ruined items and piling them next to the road. Further down, a housing area on the bayou had flooded. The houses were built on ten foot pilings and still had five or more feet of flooding in the homes. Along side the road, I saw a boat and a car in the woods, where they had been washed up. There is still so much to clean up.

Our house is making progress. Jonny’s room and our room are ready for floating sheetrock. Saturday, I plan on going to Home Dept to start getting paint for repainting. I’ll also be dropping of Daniel’s trumpet to be cleaned and fixed. We found it in the flooded trunk of Heather’s car. A Navy working crew came to our house this afternoon and made some progress in getting a lot of the trees cut up. We had three trees in our yard blow over and one leaning precariously toward the house. Two other trees in the empty lot behind us decided to blow over into our yard as well. Privacy fences do not fare to well when huge trees fall on them.

Rocky decided to give us a heart attack. He told us he could take down the leaning tree and he did. He climbed up as high as he could (which was pretty darn high) and started cutting branches and topping the tree. He kept at it (while we watched and prayed really hard) until he had it short enough to cut down. I don’t know how he handled the chainsaw and ropes and still hold on to the tree himself. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera to get any pictures.

When I was driving back and forth in Diamondhead today, it occurred to me that I’m “getting used to” the destruction and mess. When the kids return, I’ll get a chance to see it afresh, through their eyes, as they see the devastation for the first time. It made me think again of the analogy of sin. Sometimes, we’re so “used to” our sin, we fail to see the horrible and sad mess it really is. Initially, we may be shocked by it and its affect on our lives, just like I was initially shocked by the hurricane destruction when we first returned to the coast. However, if we’re not careful, we can become numb to the sin and the destruction it causes in our lives. We’ve seen it so much it almost becomes normal. Just as I have seen the piles of debris and damaged homes so often in the past week, it seems like it’s always been that way. Not until someone new reopens our eyes to the heartbreak each pile and each damaged home represents, do I remember that Diamondhead is not supposed to look this way. In the same way, we daily need a fresh look at our sin through God’s word, so that we might see our sin for what it really is, not what we’ve learned to believe is acceptable. Once we see the sin as the destructive mess that it is, we can then begin allowing the Lord to clean it out of our lives, and restore us to the beauty He intended.

May God touch your hearts in a mighty way today.

Grace & Peace

Day 17 Part one

It’s morning as I write this. A dear friend from church, Deborah, has allowed me the use of her computer so I can email all of you. Thank you Deborah. We’ll spend another day of clean up today. I think I’ve done more loads of laundry than I have ever done. Thankfully, I’ve only had to throw a few articles of clothing away. I still have more to wash, though, because I want to make sure I get out all the mold spores that collected during the days the house was still boarded up.

I’ll continue this entry later tonight, but just wanted to let you know we are doing well, all things considered. Thank you for you continued support, thoughts and prayers.

I’ll try to get the rest of the week’s posts out Sunday or Monday.

God is our refuge in times of trials.

When we are weak, He is our strength.

Grace & Peace

Day 17 Part two

What is amazing and kind of sad to me is that it took a category five hurricane and a devastated coast to get us talking to our neighbors across the street. We’ve always been on waving terms (you know, waving across the street whenever we see each other) but now I stop by and say hi to Ethel each day, before starting to work on the house.

I’ll be reporting for work Monday morning. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing, but my command is very supportive of us trying to get our lives back together.

Rocky and Nette came over to help today. Nette helped me clean Jonny’s toys while Rocky helped Jon and Bob pull out more sheet rock. I was close to tears when they had to pull out our garden tub so they could get to the sheet rock and wet insulation. I knew we were going to have a lot of work to do, but when they pulled out the tub, it kind of underscored the fact. I was close to tears again when Jon’s Sante Fe was towed away. The guy who towed it away was also willing to come back to tow away Heather’s Elantra. Maybe he knows someone who can actually clean it (the smell inside is horrible) and fix it. If so, great, at least we’re not being charged for towing and disposal.

Tomorrow, a working crew is supposed to come from the base to cut trees and clean up our yard. It looks like a war zone. Ironically enough, I used to complain that there was too much shade in our yard and we were unable to grow grass. The trees that shaded the yard have either snapped or fallen over.

Blessings

Grace & Peace

Day 16

This morning I hoped to be able to email out my daily logs. Unfortunately I was not, however, I made arrangements with someone from church to use their internet tomorrow morning.

Driving over to the house this morning, I took a different route around the flooded area of Diamondhead. More tears. It was obvious that a torrent of water just surged through the homes and washed out the windows. My heart was breaking for those who lost so much. We heard the story of someone who swam out of his house and was able to kick in the second story window of a neighbor’s house to get out of the flood waters. Amazing.

Jon and Bob took half a day off today and we were able to get a lot accomplished. After I emptied all the lower kitchen cabinets and salvaged the knobs, they ripped them out along with the drywall and wet insulation. It was obvious from the height of the mildew and mold, along with the wet insulation, that it was something that definitely needed to be done. I was able to find the cabinet company that made our cabinets, so we can have the same ones replaced and match the upper cabinets.

I was also able to salvage our entertainment center and dinette set. Every little bit helps. It seems therapeutic to clean up a piece of furniture and realize that we can still use it. I am so thankful. When I was dumping stuff in our trash pile, I saw the garbage bag full of the things from my cedar chest. I plugged my nose and rummaged through it. I pulled out some of my journals and even though they were damp, I could turn the pages and read most of the entries. So I placed them out in the sun to dry. Maybe. Unfortunately my yearbooks, cruisebooks and highschool photo albums were beyond saving. Photo chemicals do not fair well in water.

Today was Staci’s birthday, so we celebrated with steaks on the grill (Diamondhead supermarket opened today – yeah!) and a cake.

We’re all pretty exhausted.

We have so many blessings; each and every one of you included. I just pray that the Lord will be able to use me as a blessing in the lives of others.

God bless

Grace & Peace

Day 15

Jon and Bob reported for work today. Staci dropped me off at the house so I could start working. She planned on checking out what was going on at her work and then joining me; I didn’t see her again until 630 pm, when I finally got back to her house. She was put to work at the pharmacy as soon as she showed up. Jon and Bob ended up staying at work until 3 pm. So I was left alone at the house. I knew it would be hard, but didn’t realize how lonely and how overwhelming. Walking through the house, with all the carpet pulled out and about two feet of dry wall missing on the lower half of almost all my walls, with piles of stuff to clean or sort, mud on the bathroom floors and in the bathtubs, cabinets that need to be yanked out, I just didn’t know where to begin. If asked right now what we need, I’d say help. There is just so much to do and everyone is in the same situation, cleaning up their own messes or just getting by day to day because they have to start all over again.

I spent most of the day out on the back patio with a bucket of Clorox bleach and a bucket of water, scrubbing all the plates, bowls, pots and pans that were submerged in swamp water. I also dumped out Daniel and Jonny’s school work that I had been saving since preschool. Its amazing the stench that swamp water soaked school work makes. Thankfully Heather’s school work stayed above water level. I did manage to salvage my china cabinet and hutch and five book cases. Unfortunately all my books on the lower shelves suffered the same fate as Jonny’s books. I thought it rather ironic that all my home decorating/interior decorating books happened to be on those lower shelves, just when I need them the most.

Jon and Bob showed up around 4 pm, but by that time, there wasn’t much daylight to get a lot accomplished. They’re going to try to get off earlier tomorrow. We stopped by my Commanding Officer’s house on the way back to Bob’s.  He had four feet of water in his house. He has managed to pull just about everything out of the house, but hasn’t started removing drywall. Seeing his home just emphasized the need of how much help people need. The military is coordinating teams of workers to assist in clean up, it just takes time to get organized. Especially when so many have suffered the same fate.

Please continue to pray for us. We need to go back to San Antonio and bring Heather back this weekend, since her college starts Monday. We just haven’t decided when to bring the other kids back. In some ways, it easier for them to stay where they are, but we would also like them home to help with the clean up and healing of our communities.

God bless.

Grace & Peace

Day 14

This morning Jon and I got up and drove over to the house before church. Tears were streaming down my face as soon as we started driving over there. The neighborhood is scarred almost beyond recognition. I cannot believe how many trees have been blown over or snapped like toothpicks. Diamondhead once was filled with tall stately pines, palms and oaks. Now, the medium dividing the main road is piled with cut up trees and branches higher than the top of the van. The next street we turned down was lined with water sogged furniture, rugs, books, sheetrock, insulation, clothes and all the personal items that make up a home. Tears rolled down my face at the thought of all the homes ruined in side when the flood of swamp water and ocean surged through the rooms and halls, into every crevice, every drawer, every closet. And these were the homes that are repairable. We passed the streets were water rose twelve feet and higher, enough to make the homes unrepairable. It’s hard to describe what it was like going to our home. Like so many, we had water sogged stuff piled along side the street. We walked through the house and I looked at the mold growing on damp walls, cabinets and furniture. My bathroom floors are covered with a thick layer of silt. My floors are mostly cement, where Jon and Bob ripped up the carpeting, my walls are filled with holes along the baseboards where Jon tried to get air inside to begin drying them. I could just go on and on.

We went to church. Thankfully the building was still standing, sustaining no damage. I cried as I hugged people, it seemed like a lifetime had passed since I last saw them. Yes, I started hearing stories, as I knew I would. Of the mother who left her husband and two year old daughter at home, to work at the medical center during the storm. Only to return to a home that was no longer there, and to find that her husband and daughter perished in the storm. Of the two young families who have completely lost their homes and are living with their parents. The young girl whose father started worrying about the storm and left Diamondhead to stay with friends in Ocean Springs (because it was further away from the storm). They ended up spending the duration of the storm in the attic, when twenty foot storm surge flooded the house. Thankfully and ironically, when they returned to their home, it sustained very little damage. I know there are stories of hope and blessings, but right now, there is a lot of grief and loss.

We spent the rest of the day working on our home. It’s going to take a long time to make it livable again. Right now, we’re still just pulling out wet stuff, trying to salvage what can be salvaged, and trying to find places to put our salvageable stuff, since most of our furniture is in the junk heap.

As I looked at the scarred, battered and broken landscape, I wondered if this is what our soul looks like to God, because of the affects of sin. Sometimes God just has to come in and rip out all the stained and ruined parts of our lives, so he can rebuild and restore us, new, clean and in his image. As I sorted through the mess of what was left of our home, I found things I wanted to cling to, thinking maybe I could just clean it up a little. We tend to do the same thing in our lives, not wanting to let go of sin scarred habits, behaviors and character. “Let I go” Our precious Lord says. “Let it go, so that I might restore you to new. If you do not let it go, it will only be a stench in your life, a monument of past sin.”

Let it go, for He will redeem.

Only by the strength He provides

Grace & Peace