If 10 months ago I had said “in 10 months we will be …” would I have ever imagined what actually happened in those 10 months?
Yesterday we received the permit to restore our house after an arson fire. It was exactly 10 months to the day from the fire: then a Tuesday, now a Friday.
On that day, Aug. 6 when the “world turned upside down” for us, I would never have imagined the fire that detoured our lives into exile, nor the 10 months of challenges and blessings that led to our return yesterday. And like the children of Israel returning to their promised land, our return is to a land still showing the signs of the exodus and needing to be restored.
I haven’t been good about reporting during these ten months. Many of you have wanted to know how we are doing, and ways to help. But when mired in the details of the day-to-day, it is so easy to just keep on sloughing forward without looking around you, and the effort to reach out seems an expenditure of valuable time and effort best spent where you are. But it isn’t, and I need to do better. So here are a few details about where we are:
- God is Good, and we live in the Goodness of God. He has been providing (through his people, often in contravention of the efforts of his visible churches) to get to us exactly what we need, when we need it, and not a moment before. Only this past Sunday No Lynch informed us that as of Friday we would no longer have enough funds to live at an Extended Stay hotel and still pay the utility bills for the house come Friday (yesterday). When did we get the permit to come home to live? Friday.
- He directed us to the right people for what we needed. Excellent people at the city helped us through the process. It took months to find them, but once we involved our city councilperson, he connected us to John Pajor in city development, who facilitated and explained the city code procedures to us. Part of that process said we needed a Structural Engineer. We found one to do initial work, and then they bowed out, but the first Structural Engineer we had gone to, which had not taken the work initially, directed us to an architect who could finish the work, for cheaper than he could. We ended up at Garcia Architecture, assigned to Ian Cole, who, when he learned what our budget was, went to the firm owner, Rafael Garcia, and they found a way to do the work we needed within our budget, instead of what it otherwise might have cost.
- But that leaves us virtually resourceless to complete the work ahead. The only resources we have are muscle and sweat. We are cleaning up the fire damage, taking down the burned out space, and salvaging everything we can. Any bit of lumber we can save we remove the fire damaged sections and clean up to use in the new construction. Damaged wood we throw in a pile to use the wood pulp as aggregate in “papercrete” for use in pavement, landscaping and building. Nails are removed from the pulp wood. Nails are also removed from the shingles, which will be ground up for aggregate in asphat pavement.
- Our true resources lie in the vaults of Heaven, as he opens the hearts of his people to our need. And He has opened our hearts to the needs of others. Our surpluses in food and various clothing categories have gone to help people lacking in the same. No matter how poor or how strapped, the heart of heaven has told us we always have something to give. We have learned not that it is more blessed to give than to receive, but that it is most blessed to both give and receive God’s bounteous grace to each other, both neighbor, relative and stranger, always abounding in the work of the Lord.
- Not everyone we expected help from, be they family or friends, has helped us. One relative said we were unlikely to get continued help from people without proof that I was earning an income to be able to make ends meet. And then proved the same by not helping us and literally cutting us off. The effort I put in here to get the house ready so we could live in it when the permit came through (though it still needs a lot of repainting), shows I am not averse to working hard. But I refuse to throw myself further into the traditional job application process to only get the same adverse results for things I am accused of but did not do. I need someone to come alongside me and help me get around the “X” painted in invisble radioactive ink on my back to find gainful and ongoing work or employment. These relatives cannot even conceive that I might be facing the adverse and unwarranted headwinds that I am, and attribute it all to a laziness that is nowhere in my makeup.
- So now it all comes down to you, a collective and individualized you, as the Lord leads each to provide what you can of resources, encouragement, advice and know-how. For I know He will provide all our needs, according to His riches in Glory. and He knows our needs better than we do. It just takes patience while persevering in the work to divine what that is.
- So to specifics. We need:
- Paint for the entire inside of the house: one coat of Kilz to block the smoke damage smells, etc., and one or two coats of regular wall and ceiling paints to restore it to habitable coziness.
- Dry wall to replace the plywood covering holes punched by firefighters. We aso need the mudding compound for the drywall, and expertise to apply it seamlessly.
- The plan submission to the city for what we are rebuilding says the project cost should be $15,000. We need the supplies to build, or the funds to acquire the supplies to build, that restored section. Labor and knowledge expertise is also sought.
- A new roof for the whole house, once section in back is rebuilt. The firefighters punched holes in the ceiling in enough places to require a full roof replacement.
- A clothes washer and clothes dryer. Used is fine, electric preferred.
- A new HVAC heat pump. Thieves stole the copper coils out of our 15-year old unit the day before we got the eletriticy restored back in November. So we only have window units for cooling this summer.
- A new smart thermostat for our furnace and HVAC. The old one failed at the time of the fire, and without it we were unable to run our furnace to keep the pipes from freezing this winter. We had to rely on space heaters. We can get a free one from our electric company, but only if we have a cental air conditioning heat pump (see previous bullet point).
- Insurance for the house. We were trying to get reinsured when the fire preempted us.
- Money for property taxes. We were trying to get that together when the fire made us homeless and detoured the cash we did not have into paying to live elsewhere while trying to get back into the house.
The list is long, and daunting. Nor is it complete. Will we complete it? God will provide — in the fullness of time, with His vision, not ours. His provision may look different than what mine above is working toward, but it will be exceedingly abundantly more than we could ask or think.
At The Rainbow 