When I created my new website, I wanted to incorporate more of my life into my blog, which is what Her Heart is Glad and these Life Update posts are for! Usually, they are happy or exciting, but this one isn’t quite so much… though it is at the same time.
For those that follow me on Instagram (or have talked to me in the past week), you’ll know that while we were away for a weekend, Louisville got a massive amount of rain. So much so, that the Ohio River reached flood stages that it hasn’t in decades! We didn’t think anything of it because we live nowhere near the river and if the river flooded our home then pretty much all of Louisville would be underwater! But what we didn’t consider was the water table and our historically flooding basement.
When we bought our home last year, the owners had recently installed a French drain system and a large sump pump. Knowing that it was professionally installed and rated for our basement, we trusted it even though we knew our basement had flooded in the past. We even heard it working before we left and thought, “Great, it’s working we have nothing to worry about.” But oh those thoughts proved to be very wrong.
We don’t know exactly when it happened, but we think it was Saturday night. Louisville got over 3 inches of rain in a few hours (after 2.5 inches from the day before, 2 inches the day before that, 1.5 inch the day before that, and another inch before that).
Well, we got home Monday night to a complete disaster in our basement. There were boxes everywhere. Some had overturned making even more of a mess and we could just barely believe our tired eyes after a 10 hour trip and a whirlwind weekend. The water line on the wall measured 18 inches. That is all the way up to my knees! So crazy. Still to this day after cleaning everything and seeing the water line, it’s hard to believe there was that much water down there!
The following few days were salvage days trying to let important things dry out in the sunshine. We lost 90% of the books we owned and lots of pictures and picture frames, but thankfully it’s really all things that can be replaced. And despite the emotional toll it took on us, it seriously could have been way worse. I just kept thanking the Lord for our health, that we have each other, we have our families, an incredibly generous church family, and a house where we can live even if the basement was a little wet and messy.
After the initial shock and acceptance of losing so many possessions, the hardest part was spending nearly a week without a hot water heater because the water extinguished the pilot light, and then nearly a week and a half without heat! Thank the Lord for friends with showers and space heaters! Our new washer and dryer were also pretty much goners, which made me incredibly sad because (besides the house) I felt like it was our first researched and evaluated adult purchase and loved them. But those are being replaced too with the exact same models.
But through all the craziness and tears, we have been so blessed, which is where the happy part of this post comes in. Through the “storm”, we have so much to be thankful for. Our insurance is actually covering the cost of everything which is a huge shock. We didn’t purchase separate flood insurance because we aren’t immediately near any creeks or rivers, so we assumed nothing would be covered. But because the sump pump was there to prevent the flooding and it was overwhelmed, it’s covered! Praise the Lord! And we’ve been able to appreciate our generous friends who have graciously given their time, homes, fans, and washing machines to us for use in our time of need.
This past week has been a reminder of the Lord’s faithfulness in all things. We are only here on this earth temporarily and my treasures are not here. We can’t take it with us and honestly I’m glad we don’t!
So that’s our little story about what we are going to refer to as “The Great Flood of 2018”. It’s just another story we get to add to the Matt & Karyn saga and I’m looking forward to many more as long as they are with Matt. <3
