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.
