REDEMPTION UNVEILED
Beauty from Ashes- A Redemption Story
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled.
Instinctively I replied, “What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming.”...
This is a post that I wrote in 2016 after our house caught on fire. It is a beautiful thing to look back and see what God did through all of this horrible experience.
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled. Instinctively I replied,
“What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.” He stated.
“I’m coming.”
I was in my brother’s bathroom trying on some jeans at a rummage sale. It had been an uneventful day… until now. I ran outside and told my brother “I need you to drive me home. Now. Our house is on fire.”
It took me less than a minute to be on my way. As we drove on the back country road I saw the fire trucks a couple of miles behind. It was then that I realized we would beat them to our house. I couldn’t help but wonder what I was going to see when I arrived.
My thoughts were interrupted by my brother’s statement,
“Oh shit.”
I looked up and saw it…
The smoke.
It was a lot of smoke.
I had seen this sight a hundred times before, a pillar of smoke in the distance. I can never help but wonder what is causing it. I didn’t wonder this time.
I knew.
This was my house.
This was the house that we bought only five months ago.
This was the house that I had spent every weekend and many weeknights of the past 20 weeks working on. This was the house that we had just painted… and trimmed… and replaced doors… countertops… fans… lighting… and flooring. I had finally chosen my curtains and bedding and was finalizing room décor. This was our fixer-upper… that we were almost done with.
As soon as I saw the smoke, I put my face in my hands and began to sob.
How can this be happening?
This can’t be happening.
But it was.
As we arrived at our home I saw my husband and three sweet babies in our front yard watching our house burn. The flames were pouring out of our children’s playroom.
As my brother pulled into our front yard, I opened my door and had my foot on the ground before the truck had even stopped.
My babies. I needed to hold my babies.
I ran up to them, hugged them, and thanked God for their safety.
The firefighters pulled in and we said a quick prayer for them as they began to work. We watched as they quickly got the flames under control and made sure the fire was extinguished. It all happened so fast and quickly it was over.
The fire was out.
I had never been in a house that had been on fire before. From the outside, I thought the loss would be isolated to one room... but I was wrong. I have heard the term “smoke damage”, but could not have imagined the extent of destruction it caused so quickly.
Our house was destroyed.
As I walked through the house, I couldn’t even process what I saw. There is no way this could be my house. My house was filled with natural light, light-colored walls, and white trim.
It was like I had walked into a nightmare version of my home.
Our normally bright house was a pit of darkness. Even with a flashlight, I could hardly see. The air burned my throat and I had to leave after only a few minutes inside.
We all stood around for a bit and talked about how thankful we were that everyone was safe and how we all knew everything would work out.
Then one by one everyone said their goodbyes and wished us the best.
Carter and I didn’t know what to do.
What are you supposed to do?
So we just sat in our front yard on a stump, baffled, at what had just happened.
What had just happened?
This fire had just demolished the last five months of our lives. And we weren’t just starting over, we were starting farther back than ever before.
How did we get here? We have never been those people that wanted a “fixer-upper”; in fact, because of our lack of skills we tried to avoid it. But after two years of looking, we decided this house had the greatest potential to give us what we dreamed of.
We bought our house hoping we could handle the adventure of a remodel. We had almost done it. It was far from perfect, but we were proud of it. We were proud of it because we had put so much time and effort into it. Of course we still had a ton of projects to do, but we had our final *big* project scheduled for the following week.
We have never worked so hard on anything.
All of our hard work was wiped away in about 20 minutes.
...
The next morning, I was lying in bed and a scripture I grew up hearing came to my mind.
“To give them beauty for ashes…”
I have always loved the sound of these words. Very poetic and they paint a beautiful picture of the redemptive process. It got me thinking… redemption is beautiful, but to be truthful, the process of bringing beauty out of ashes is not easy.
I find myself today with a giant opportunity, I get to bring beauty from ashes… literally.
This process will not just happen. It will cost me. I have had, and will continue to have, many opportunities to not bring beauty from this situation.
I can choose not to make the most of it.
But I won’t.
I will not allow this situation to steal any more from me than it already has
I am headed to Redemption.
I do not worry about the destination, but the journey overwhelms me at times. I know how costly it is to go on this journey. It is not fun, but it is worth it. Even though I would not have chosen this. I can do this.
I will do this.
I will release my expectations.
I will stand on my faith.
I will hold on to my hope.
And I will choose to love.
And then I will wait. I will wait and watch it all unfold.
Beauty is coming.
Just wait and see.
Do you know of anyone who is also in an overwhelming time of their life? Forward this to them and let us make beauty together!
Home Sweet Home {One Year Later}
One year ago, today, our house caught on fire. It has been quite the eventful past year! Thankfully, we have moved back into our house and we are loving every minute of it! Here's a bit of an update on our home and family. I hope you are doing well my friend, Haley.
One year ago, today, our home caught on fire.
Thankfully, it was not a total loss. Just the walls, part of the roof, our ceilings, insulation, cabinets, doors, windows, and a good chunk of our stuff.
The home we had remodeled for five months quickly turned into a total gut job. Awesome.
Fast forward seven months and we were able to move into our home again. This time everything was brand new and quite lovely.
We moved back into our house the exact same week that we bought our house last year, the last week of April. How is that for coincidence? Haha. It was the week after I turned THIRTY. I told Carter that I have now been “given” a house two years in a row for my birthday, so I have a pretty high bar for next year. Haha! Actually, to be honest, the only thing I would like for my birthday next year is to NOT move into ANY house!
We are home and we are so very happy.
We are settled, our house is decorated and every box is unpacked. Our garage is even cleaned out. (And some people don’t believe in miracles!)
We did it.
Our home is finished and quite beautiful. Did you hear that? FINISHED! Who knew that we would ever say that?!
It took us a LONG time to get here but we have arrived. We have had so many work days on this house, pre-fire and post-fire.
When the day finally came to move in, we had the kids stay the night with their grandparents and we finished moving into our house without telling them! Carter and I loaded the rest of our furniture and whatever I could fit into my van. (Why do I not think moving boxes are necessary??? Because I am an idiot. That's why.)
We unloaded our furniture, just the two of us, into our completely restored home. To be honest, we have dozens of people that would have been happy to help us with our FINAL move in, but it was therapeutic to do it ourselves. Well, for me at least. I loved bringing every single item into our home and deciding where it should belong.
We set up our furniture, made beds and set up the kids’ playroom. I wanted my kids to instantly feel at home when they walked in. No more being unsettled.
The next morning we brought them HOME. They were so surprised! It was amazing.
Within ten minutes, Mayliss had found the nail polish and was going wild with it. (Not surprising.) And within thirty minutes, Shep had gone missing. Upon doing a quick search, I found him alone in his bedroom with his Army guys scattered everywhere.
My heart was happy.
We were home.
We moved home at the end of April and I took a break from my writing and Social Media to focus on my family and getting us settled back into our normal lives. Whatever normal is?
Each day as I have organized and decorated I have tried to process the past year of our lives.
What in the world happened?
Things did not go as we planned. That's what happened. We had a plan, but our plan was taken from us. Without notice we found ourselves with a different path. We had no choice but to accept this *new plan*, but the process felt very disappointing. Funny enough, we actually became more excited with the new plan than our original one. Which is wonderful, but it did not make the experience any easier.
This past year was exhausting.
We had many moments of disappointment and discouragement. It was challenging and very stretching to feel so unsettled with our family of five for an entire year.
I have finally come up with the perfect word to sum up everything we went through this past year…
Life.
Life happened.
This is it. In all of its glory. Life brings us plans that we don’t want, but we have to take. I have learned that my life is much better if I choose to be appreciative of what I have instead of focused on everything I don't.
This life hands us things that we don’t expect and we didn’t ask for. We don’t get to pick what we are given, but we do get to pick how we play our hand. We may not always love what we have been dealt, but let's not forget to enjoy the game.
I will leave you with some pictures of our beautiful home...
Blessings my friends. -Haley
That Awkward Moment When... You Have a Breakdown at Walmart
Have you ever had a breakdown at a less than optimal time?! I have... at Walmart. Awkward! Watch my account of the events in my very first video blog!...
It Doesn't Hurt Us to Wait
During the first few days after our house fire I could not quite pin-point what I was most upset about. Before this, I always thought the most difficult part of a house fire (without injuries) was the loss of “stuff”, but for me the hardest part wasn’t the stuff. The stuff was just stuff...
During the first few days after our house fire I could not quite pin-point what I was most upset about. Before this, I always thought the most difficult part of a house fire (without injuries) was the loss of “stuff”, but for me the hardest part wasn’t the stuff. The stuff was just stuff.
Two weeks before it happened we had decided we would officially finish being in “remodel” mode. We had a long list of projects still to-do, but we knew it was time to settle in and begin to live life again. One more “big” project and then we would be done with the biggest parts of our remodel.
Like most of us, we have had to wait for many things in our lives. For us, this house represented so many of our dreams finally coming true. We have long desired to have a house in the country, with a little bit of land, the kids and the pets. In many ways, we felt like we had “arrived” somewhere we had been trying to get for the past ten years. Finally.
It was time to rest.
When our house went up in smoke I felt like more was taken from us than our stuff. I felt like I was watching both my future and my past go up in flames. This wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wanted to be in my house. I wanted to be living my dream. I didn’t want to wait anymore.
I wanted my dream now… not later.
I felt like we had arrived at the finish line and someone was asking us to start the race back from the beginning. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do it all again. Did I even have it in me? Honestly, at first, I didn’t know. And I didn’t want to know.
I knew that eventually everything would work out. I knew we would regain everything we had lost, but I knew it wouldn’t be today. It was the time that I felt we had lost and the time I felt we had to wait that seemed more than I could bear.
“It doesn’t hurt us to wait.”
I have probably said this a hundred times to my kids. But truthfully, at times, I am telling myself just as much as I am telling them. Why in the world is waiting so damn hard?
Waiting is simply being. Waiting gives us an opportunity to rest. But often times we don’t choose to rest, we choose to become restless. In the world we live in, waiting and resting are under-rated. Many of us don’t know how to rest and we don’t understand the value of it.
It is funny because I was looking forward to a season of rest and now I am in one. Of course, it’s not like I expected it to look.
Welcome to life, Haley, it is full of surprises.
Sure, my home is completely gutted… well… besides the room of ash. But hey, we have been given a wonderful place to live while we wait. We have had every single need met and more. We have been reminded that we have the most amazing people in our lives that have been here to support us through every step. We have each other. We are doing great.
I will now use this time as an opportunity to learn how to wait better and rest deeper. I am reminded again that my happiness in this life has little to do with my desires being fulfilled and everything to do with my willingness to appreciate what I have been given.
Sure, I have lost my house for now. But I’ll get it back.
Let me tell you though, I will not be waiting until then to
“live the dream”.
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Beauty from Ashes
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled.
Instinctively I replied, “What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming.”...
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled. Instinctively I replied,
“What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.” He stated.
“I’m coming.”
I was in my brothers’ bathroom trying on some jeans at a rummage sale. It had been an uneventful day… until now.
I ran outside and told my brother “I need you to drive me home. Now. Our house is on fire.”
It took me less than a minute to be on my way. As we drove on the back country road I saw the fire trucks a couple of miles behind. It was then that I realized we would beat them to our house. I couldn’t help but wonder what I was going to see when I arrived.
My thoughts were interrupted by my brother’s statement,
“Oh shit.”
I looked up and saw it…
The smoke.
It was a lot of smoke.
I had seen this sight a hundred times before, a pillar of smoke in the distance. I can never help but wonder what is causing it. I didn’t wonder this time.
I knew.
This was my house.
This was the house that we bought only five months ago.
This was the house that I had spent every weekend and many weeknights of the past 20 weeks working on. This was the house that we had just painted… and trimmed… and replaced doors… countertops… fans… lighting… and flooring. I had finally chosen my curtains and bedding and was finalizing room décor. This was our fixer upper… that we were almost done with.
As soon as I saw the smoke, I put my face in my hands and began to sob.
How can this be happening?
This can’t be happening.
But it was.
As we arrived to our home I saw my husband and three sweet babies in our front yard watching our house burn. The flames were pouring out of our children’s play room.
As my brother pulled into our front yard, I opened my door and had my foot to the ground before the truck had even stopped.
My babies. I needed to hold my babies.
I ran up to them, hugged them and thanked God for their safety.
The firefighters pulled in and we said a quick prayer for them as they began to work. We watched as they quickly got the flames under control and made sure the fire was extinguished. It all happened so fast and quickly it was over.
The fire was out.
I had never been in a house that had been on fire before. From the outside, I thought the loss would be isolated to one room... but I was wrong. I have heard the term “smoke damage”, but could not have imagined the extent of destruction it caused so quickly.
Our house was destroyed.
As I walked through the house, I couldn’t even process what I saw. There is no way this could be my house. My house was filled with natural light, light colored walls and white trim.
It was like I had walked into a nightmare version of my home.
Our normally bright house was a pit of darkness. Even with a flashlight I could hardly see. The air burned my throat and I had to leave after only a few minutes inside.
We all stood around for a bit and talked about how thankful we were that everyone was safe and how we all knew everything would work out.
Then one by one everyone said their goodbye’s and wished us the best.
Carter and I didn’t know what to do.
What are you supposed to do?
So we just sat in our front yard on a stump, baffled, at what had just happened.
What had just happened?
This fire had just demolished the last five months of our lives. And we weren’t just starting over, we were starting farther back than ever before.
How did we get here? We have never been those people that wanted a “fixer upper”; in fact, because of our lack of skills we tried to avoid it. But after two years of looking we decided this house had the greatest potential to give us what we dreamed of.
We bought our house hoping we could handle the adventure of a remodel. We had almost done it. It was far from perfect, but we were proud of it. We were proud of it because we had put so much time and effort into it. Of course we still had a ton of projects to do, but we had our final *big* project scheduled for the following week.
We have never worked so hard on anything.
All of our hard work, wiped away in about 20 minutes.
...
The next morning, I was lying in bed and a scripture I grew up hearing came to my mind.
“To give them beauty for ashes…”
I have always loved the sound of these words. Very poetic and they paint a beautiful picture of the redemptive process. It got me thinking… redemption is beautiful, but to be truthful, the process to bring beauty out of ashes is not easy.
I find myself today with a giant opportunity, I get to bring beauty from ashes… literally.
This process will not just happen. It will cost me. I have had, and will continue to have, many opportunities to not bring beauty from this situation.
I can choose not to make the most of it.
But I won’t.
I will not allow this situation to steal any more from me than it already has
I am headed to Redemption.
I do not worry about the destination, but the journey overwhelms me at times. I know how costly it is to go on this journey. It is not fun, but it is worth it. Even though I would not have chosen this. I can do this.
I will do this.
I will release my expectations.
I will stand on my faith.
I will hold on to my hope.
And I will choose to love.
And then I will wait. I will wait and watch it all unfold.
Beauty is coming.
Just wait and see.
Do you know of anyone who is also in an overwhelming time of their life? Forward this to them and let us make beauty together!
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DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-MAIL LIST, SO YOU NEVER MISS A POST FROM REDEMPTION UNVEILED!