It's early at the Altman family lake house, just before 6 am. Pretty soon, the tiny feet of my niece and nephew will be stomping down every step to see what awaits them under the tree from Santa. In the stillness of the morning, a thousand memories dance in and out of my thoughts. Four generations of my family members have enjoyed the holidays in this house. But of all of the memories and children and families who have enjoyed the magic of this house, perhaps this year will be the most precious.
In October, an unprecedented amount of rainfall hit our beautiful state. Some reports called the systems that brought the rain "the perfect storm", others called it the 1000 year's flood. So many people lost their entire homes and their livelihoods. It was truly one of the most devastating storms our state had experienced in decades, maybe centuries.
When the rains came, the lakes and rivers began to rise. The rivers exceed flood stages with remarkable speed and did not crest for days. Some saw the river levels rise 6 to 7 feet or more above flood stage. In our family's lake house, the water rose over 2 feet into the second level of our house. Everything was left in ruin. When the waters receded, we found a thick layer of river mud covering everything. The hardwood floors were warped along with the walls, cabinets, all furniture, and many of the items from the first level were floating down the Black River somewhere. It seemed like there was no hope left for our family home.
The clean-up began the week residents were allowed to return. But we all knew that celebrating Christmas at our house was completely out of the question. There just wasn't enough time to fix all of the devastation the storm had caused. The house sat in complete disrepair.
And then something happened.
For weeks, our family discussed where we would have our annual Christmas gathering. The storm had already taken so much from us, but we were not going to let it force our family to be separated during the holidays.
About a week ago, my parents told me that they had cleaned and treated the house enough that we could sleep there. My mama told me that she had found aero beds for the children to sleep on downstairs. She even told me to bring my crockpot so that we could cook all of our food in it as there were no appliances in the house.
When I arrived Christmas Eve, expecting the house to be barren, I walked into a beautiful home complete with comfy sofas and chairs, our family's dining table they had managed to save, new area rugs, new appliance that had just been delivered the day before...and our beautiful family Christmas tree. My parents were determined that our family would have Christmas in our house just as we always had.
Immediately, I started to cry. This was their gift to us. My daddy had spent all of those weeks ripping out cabinets, wet insulation, warped flooring, hauling off all of the destroyed furniture and appliance. He had worked every day since the waters receded to save our house. And my mama had placed and ordered every piece of furniture to bring our house back to the way we remembered it. And they did all of this for us.
My mama and daddy worked for weeks to give our family the most precious gift of all. They gave us our house back. They gave us back our first Christmases, our late night back porch talks, our laughs around the dinner table. They took the broken and destroyed and they put it all back together again. And all at once I realized, this is exactly what love looks like. When all hope seems lost, when the broken things are so scattered and torn apart that you think you will never find them again, that is when love steps in and finds the hope in the hopeless. Love finds the pieces and puts them all back together again. This is exactly what love looks like. Thank you, Mama and Daddy, for finding all the pieces and putting them back together again.
Merry Christmas to all and may all of your pieces find their way home.
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