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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

A Big Problem?


This past week has been pretty intense and stressful, hence no pregnancy update. That’ll come tomorrow, but today I just wanted to share [part of] the insanity.

In the past month, a huge neighborhood by our house has had several attempted break-ins. As someone who is home all the time with loud, obnoxious pups that bark at everything that may move, I don’t worry too much about it, but I have been more alert than usual. So, when I heard a weird noise coming from the front door last Wednesday, I thought someone was trying to get in the house. The kiddos were out back, but I “ran” (I use that term loosely) to the door to see what was going on.

We have a million windows, so I could easily see the front porch and, to my surprise and momentary relief, no one was there. I was obviously a little confused about what I could have possibly heard if nothing had happened, but I was happy I wasn’t going to have to lay anyone out (protective maternal instincts for the win!). As I was turning to go back in to the living room, though, I saw something made my heart sink and stomach flip all over again… the huge tree in our front yard had cracked down the center and most of it had fallen all over the place.



I went outside to see how extensive the damage was… The tree was about 40 feet tall and probably a good 20-30 feet in diameter. About 2/3 of the branches had fallen toward the street and were taking up over half of the street. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed. The summer before last, this same tree had broken a bit and about 1/5 of it had fallen on our house (the damage was minimal and required no repairs, fortunately, be we inspected the tree and it seemed like it was okay).

This time, though it had not fallen on the house, it had fallen INTO the street in front of us, making it a huge risk to people driving. Not to mention, there were only two pieces left of the tree, each on opposite sides: one would fall on our house, the other looked like it would fall into our neighbors’ driveway where they park their car. Can you imagine that I was a little stressed and overwhelmed?!



Drew was at work, so I texted/called him, but he didn’t really get the extent of the situation. My next thought was to call my mom, who always knows what to do, but she was in a spot with barely any cell service, so I couldn’t tell her what was going on. I called my dad and was able to talk to him and he helped calm me down a bit (did I mention that I was a little stressed and overwhelmed?) Neighbors kept driving by, inching past the top of the tree, looking at me like I had done this on purpose. I should also mention that I’m visibly pregnant and I might have been in my pajamas. Whatever.

After a few minutes (and me changing clothes), our next door neighbor got home and saw the tree. He came over and started talking to me about what I should do, because I really didn’t have a clue. I couldn’t move it at all (it weighed tons, literally). I didn’t know who to call, money is tight and tree removal is expensive. I didn’t want to make a decision until talking to Drew or my mom to know what the best course of action was. But our neighbor started telling me about how he had some friends that could come over and chop the tree into smaller parts and help get it off the road. By this point, it was about 5:00, meaning the sun would be setting soon and we’d lose our light and our warmth. A decision needed to be made soon. My mom got to our house within a few more minutes and we decided it was worth having our neighbors’ friends come over. He made the call and his friends agreed to come over for a very small amount of money.

The Blessings

Within about 30 minutes, a few more neighbors had stopped by to offer help and chainsaws. Drew got home early to help (I don’t handle stress well and needed him to help me figure out what to do and manage the people at our house). Our neighbors’ friends arrived. All the guys and my mom got to work, chainsawing up a huge tree and hauling ginormous branches off the road and into our front yard.


After a couple hours’ time, the tree was completely off the road. However, it was in our front yard and the remaining tree that was still precariously standing, each side threatening to fall and do some level of damage that we could by no means afford (financially or emotionally) to handle. I was so relieved to have the tree off the road. I was so relieved no one had been walking or driving by our house when the tree fell. But, honestly, I was still on edge knowing that that chunk of tree could still fall at any time.

One of the guys that came over had mentioned that he knew a guy that could remove the tree and may give us a good deal, something we pretty desperately needed. We went ahead and looked at other people and asked around, though, thinking we would go with whoever could get rid of the tree for the least amount of money. The guy who had come over had already done SO much to help us, and while we were (are) so grateful, we just didn’t have huge expectations for him to come through with a huge deal for us. We weren’t upset or unhappy with him, just didn’t want to take advantage of his kindness or put all our eggs in his basket (so to speak) just in case something didn’t work out… Keep in mind, we’d never met this guy before Wednesday and our only connection to him was a neighbor we don’t know very well.

After a couple days, though, we found out this guy had been making calls and working with his friends to come chop down this tree… and it would likely be free. Yes, FREE. The two guys are really good friends and the tree remover owed the guy that helped us a favor. Let me spell this out a little more—this young guy (our age), that we had never met or heard of or come into contact with before, came over at the last minute to help us with a huge task for little money and then cashed in a favor he was owed to help US get a normally expensive service done FOR FREE.



I can’t even put into words how Drew and I felt (and still feel) about this. We are pretty used to things going wrong with our house. We are, unfortunately, accustomed to find out that fixing these issues will be expensive and stretch us. We are not used to strangers going so far out of their way to help us. This is the kind of thing you hear about on the news or in church, it’s not the kind of thing that actually happens to you.

Anyway, on Saturday, this amazing-hearted guy came back with his friend and they worked to cut down the rest of the tree. They left but we still had a front yard full of logs and branches—a total mess! (In case you don’t know, trees are ridiculously heavy, so this wasn’t something Drew and I could just go out and take care off, especially with me being seven months pregnant.)



The guy said he would come back for a THIRD time to help us clear out the wood the next day (this past Sunday), but Drew got off work Saturday and wanted to get as much done as possible, so he started texting and calling friends to see if they’d be willing to come help. Saturday night, one of his friends came over and the two of them worked for a couple hours, until it was very dark and chilly, hauling logs into our back yard (which is big and full of wood) and a different neighbors’ backyard (who graciously offered to allow us to put some logs in his yard, saying he’d burn them later).

Sunday rolled around and over came Drew’s dad and more of our friends, armed with chainsaws, tools, and coolers, ready to help and work! They were able to finish up with the hauling and get the tree stump nice and small, so it only stuck up a couple inches from the grass. (Drew told our new friend that he didn’t have to come back out, he had already done so much for us!)



A Blessing in Disguise

When this whole debacle happened, I’m not going to lie, I couldn’t help but think things like: Seriously? Why us? Of course this happens now, when we really don’t have the means to handle it. Of course this happens when we have a baby on the way. When it rains, it pours…


I knew in my head that we were so fortunate that it didn’t hit anyone in the road (kids had just gotten off the bus), no accidents were caused (people were coming home from work), and it didn’t hit the house (it would have likely hit right above our room). In my spirit, though, I was just exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed, and irritated. This year has been far from easy, so it seemed pretty typical but still unwelcome that something like this should happen. It’s so easy to see things through our own lens, how we are affected by life’s crazy happenings, and lose sight of the ripple effect. I knew we had been so lucky that people were just willing to come over and help, that there were two guys we had never heard of before who were willing to drop their plans and come do hard labor in the cold weather for complete strangers (I should mention, they were willing to come over for free, but we were not okay with that and offered them money for their time/effort). And it also crossed my mind that we were lucky to get rid of this problem tree now, before the baby is born and things get really crazy. It could easily have fallen while she was playing in the front yard or something.

The tree drama, plus a couple other big issues that happened this week (I’ll post about them later), made for a very emotional and stressful week. Combined with pregnancy hormones, I’ve been a little bit on the teary side. So, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when I went out Saturday evening to grocery shop and came home early, in tears, needing a hug from my hubby (though I’m sure I freaked him out pretty royally—sorry, Drew!). Anyway, Drew and I were sitting in the driveway and he was texting his friends about coming over to help out, when he received a text that put this whole situation into a totally new perspective.

The guy that had gone above and beyond for us texted Drew, telling us what a blessing we had been to his friend (the one that came with him the first night to do the bulk of the work). He told us that this friend had had no money, no food to eat, until our tree fell and he came over to work. (Please keep in mind that this is the same guy who was willing to come over and work for free.)

We had been so concerned and preoccupied with our own situation and the issues we were having and spending money, it never occurred to us how this event affected anyone else. It seriously (unfortunately) blew our minds to see how good people can be, how selfless and generous people can be, and it totally changed the way we thought about the tree falling.

Before, we thought about how this happened to us, but now it seems like it happened for someone else… and we are completely okay with that.

It was an emotional and trying week, but it turned out to be such a blessing to us, too. It meant so much to see our friends come out of the woodwork to help us, to see the goodness of strangers, and how other people are impacted by random events that we can only see from our perspective. Overall, I’m so grateful to have had this problem arise and be resolved.

We truly are blessed and so fortunate to have so many wonderful, caring people in our lives.