the flood: part 1

so… we’ve been involved in a bit of devastation over this past weekend, as have many other nashville families. in the past 2 days, nashville has flooded in ways that no one around here ever thought possible! people and animals have been rescued in boats.. emergency cases flown out in helicopters.. and 6 people in our county have died.

we have our own little flood story. so far, it goes like this…

preface:
we found out last monday that dear husband was no longer going to be put on a job in san antonio for a year! for the past 9 months of our lives [as our friends and family already know], we’d been struggling big time with the prospect of having to live a life 14 hours from our home. being told that we weren’t going was actually bittersweet at first, because we both truly want whatever is best for steven’s career. however, we ultimately felt really really good about the outcome! for the rest of the week, i was ecstatic. our lives were finally perfect! more than perfect! super perfect! i’d get to stay in my happy little home. every day. playing with my flowers, painting, dinners on the back porch, enjoying our housey! i don’t know how many times i said the words, “nothing could upset me now!”

aaaand skipping up to saturday:
it started out like any other rainy weekend forecast. a lot of rain. and we were all like “blehhh, i hate rain.” we had a lazy saturday morning, then drove to stevo’s parents’ house and back that afternoon. we witnessed a lot of weird flooding along the way, and we couldn’t believe it! crazy, floods. how crazy. we had no clue what we were in for. later, we watched half of a movie [the soloist, kinda boring], ordered a pizza, and hung out with the neighbs [matt & maggie]. we made flood jokes. and power outage jokes. because it was no big deal.

sunday morning:
we’d had crazy storms and a tornado warning around 6 am.. and around 9, maggie called steven’s phone [knowing my sleepyhead would never answer] and told him that the flood was getting close to their house! [which is down the street from ours and on land that backs up to the harpeth river.. but is elevated much higher.. usually.] we hopped out of bed and raced to brush our teeth and put on some clothes to go check out the issue. when we got there, the view from their back porch looked like this…

so they moseyed on up to our house for the night.. with a few things for safe keeping.. just in case their floors got a little wet.

and kept rising…

and it’s a good thing we did…

because the water kept on rising…

and then we evacuated.

we never thought it would happen… but it did. and we spent last night in a house that’s higher up in our neighborhood, owned by a wonderful coworker of steven’s and his ridiculously sweet wife. they fed us and shared their home with us and some of our other neighbors. we had no electricity and we couldn’t leave due to the flooding, so we waited. and talked. we did a little laughing. we did a lot of crying. a little sleeping, too.

some of the boys walked down to our area to check out the flooding that afternoon and found stevens shoe floating outside of our house. as others investigated, we heard that you could still see the top of maggie’s car in our drive [they’d driven it up to ours], that steven’s car alarm was going off, and that matt’s truck had floated down their driveway. there was nothing we could do, so we chuckled… and then felt kinda nauseous.

early this morning, we were told that a few roads had been cleared! we escaped our neighborhood and headed to the franklin area, where maggie’s parents live, which took us 3 hours to get to because there was basically only one road out. after they fed us a fabulous breakfast, steven and i were picked up by his dad and brought to his family’s home, also in franklin. and also with electricity. and that’s where we are now. kitty & pup, too. i might add that kitty & pup have been the most cooperative little flood victims! so glad we have our babies!

so, we know that we had about 4 feet of water flowing through our house this weekend, and we’ll be heading out to sort through the damage in the morning. we’ve entered a whole new chapter in our lives, and i’m not sure that i like it. i never quite pictured myself as a homeless person, really. fingers crossed that my computer survived! maybe the clothes we stacked on the bed? maybe? my paintings? feeling doubtful.

i’m still confused. this is nashville! this doesn’t happen! floods? really? it doesn’t seem real! but we’re just thankful we’re safe. and we have our baby fluffballs. my horses are also safe. my farmhome is safe. our families are safe. and we’ll rebuild our lives! starting tomorrow. in the meantime, prayers are welcome! can’t wait to see what lies ahead…

video of our area can be seen here. [our flooded back yard can be seen at 1:42 on the far left.]

[more floody updates to come]

xoxo

the refugees