Over the last several months, we’ve been riding a storm.

I’ve mostly kept silent on this platform about it because words have so often failed me anytime I have begun to endeavor to write about what we’ve been experiencing. Words, sometimes, just aren’t enough to express everything I’m feeling, and even if they were, I haven’t always known enough of what I’m feeling to even put thoughts down.

For those closest to me – those who have been walking with us for all this time – they know the struggles. They know the outcomes. But even then, they don’t know all the truths that God has been pouring into my heart through these trials. And some things, I’ve kept so close to my heart, no one but God and my family know.

It would have been easy to write something on this medium when everything felt terrible, emotions were raw, and I didn’t have a proper perspective on things. And I think that’s why my words have fallen short, failed, and otherwise escaped me this whole time. I don’t want to write from a place of pain and big, negative emotions, because then my words would be clouded with feelings and not facts.

In James we are told to not be double-minded like a ship tossed about on the waves of the sea. Wishy-washy, unsettled, adrift. Unanchored.

We are given a beautiful example of perfect peace in the midst of the storm in Jesus asleep on a boat. All the while His disciples ran around frantic and harried, doing all they could to keep the vessel afloat, on course, and stable, Jesus slept. They finally woke Him up and complained and lamented that He didn’t even seem to care that they were perishing. But Jesus simply stood up, rebuked the storm, and sat back down. The One who was in control of the storm the whole time was literally in the boat with them, and they didn’t recognize it. They saw, but they didn’t see. They were too distracted by what they were feeling and experiencing to understand the truth in front of them – that even the wind and waves obey Him.

I’m no different than the twelve.

So every time I started to write something, I realized it wasn’t from the right vantage point. And I want the testimony I give to be bathed in the truth of God’s Word, not my wave-tossed emotions prone to ebb and flow and leave the God I love.

“O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above”

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

So all that said…

Here is what we have experienced in 2023 so far:

Our house and workshop roofs were both hit with the 80 mph winds of March 3. This was the “setting off” of a series of other home issues that were soon to befall us, or rather, be brought to light.

This whole saga actually goes all the way back to 2020 when we purchased our home and farm, but I’ll get to that.

We filed a claim with our homeowners’ insurance that Friday evening, and an adjuster was scheduled for the following week. This was the last weekend we had together as a family before Hubby was set to leave with his Guard unit for nearly three weeks for a training exercise overseas, so we didn’t have much time to get things lined up before he would be gone and mostly out of pocket for making major decisions. Major decisions would now fall to me. Not my favorite, as I tend to enjoy my role as ezer kenegdo (helpmeet, helpmate) in our marriage, and stepping into the role of head of household in Hubby’s temporary absence is not something I relish. It’s not that I’m incapable or that my husband is overbearing. It’s not that he makes all decisions without my input as though I’m a second-class citizen without a voice; it’s that we are a team by God’s design, and when half the team is out of the game, the team is put at a disadvantage. So, naturally, in all my emotional upheaval, I begged him to shirk his duties as an officer on a mission and not leave me with all this mess to handle alone.

He could not.

So we planned for his departure, much to my chagrin.

But I digress…

On the Sunday night prior to his military orders, Hubby was in the basement when I started a shower. While he was still in the basement and the water was running, Hubby noticed a stream of clear water coming from a small space in the bottom block of our basement wall. Through a series of tests – turning water on and off and watching the basement wall – we realized that the water was only coming through the wall when the water was running.

It was a broken pipe.

Now I’ll go all the way back to 2020 when we bought the house.

We knew the house had some quirks, and I’ve written about those pretty extensively. Quirks are something we expected from a house built in the late 1970s – things like threadbare shag carpet, zebra print linoleum, wallpaper with busty ladies playing the clarinet, and baby blue paint in the master bedroom. We never expected undisclosed broken pipes underneath the backyard patio, behind the basement wall, allowing water to run along our foundation for the entire time we’d owned the house up to that point, and maybe even prior to us owning the home. The fact that spray foam was put into the cinder blocks in the wall of the basement leads us to believe there were some – let’s just say – questionable home selling tactics. Spray foam we didn’t know was there until after closing. Of course. But I won’t get into all that may or may not imply about other peoples’ character.

We filed a second insurance claim – this time, for the broken pipe.

On Tuesday – the day Hubby was set to report to his Guard unit – the insurance sent us two plumbers from a franchise plumbing company, that shall remain nameless here, and those two poor souls were out of their depth. We demonstrated the water only flowing from the block while water was running in the house, and then they watched the water stop flowing from the block once water was turned off. We suggested there must be a pipe broken somewhere behind the wall that was causing water to flow through the block. Water will find a way through the path of least resistance, so it made sense to us that water could reach that point in the wall.

It was a new place in the wall where water was finding a way in. Since the spring of 2021, when the spray foam became dislodged from its hiding place, we’ve had water issues in the basement. We called the insurance back then and were told it sounded like a ground water issue, which wasn’t covered under our policy, and we were told it was something we’d have to handle on our own unless we had flood insurance. What never made sense to us was that we would get water in the basement even when the sump pump was running, and sometimes even when it wasn’t because we hadn’t had rain. The ground outside would be dry, but we would have water in the basement. We were told it was because ground water was somehow still finding a way in.

We had a contractor come to the house to look at things in 2021, and he told us it was ground water, and he suggested we do this or that to fix the problem. We plugged one of the holes in the basement wall with hydraulic cement and bought a better sump pump. We put a dehumidifier in the basement, and the wet/dry ShopVac had taken up permanent residence down there as well. We constantly checked the basement for water damage and mold. Anything to keep the house okay. But we still had water. Not always, but at the most random times. None of it ever made full sense to us, but because the insurance and a contractor both said it was ground water, and because we couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the water was coming into the basement because we don’t spend all our time down there, we just didn’t know for certain. Until Sunday, March 5, 2023.

This is the part in the story where I tell you that this issue has caused an untold amount of anxiety in me over the structural integrity of the home. The floors dip in places and allow canned vegetables to roll down slopes in areas. I have paced the floors of this home so many times, filled with paranoia and angst, my family has come to see it as just one of those weird things I do sometimes, and their response has always been, The house is fine, Kimi.” But I have always maintained that dipping floors, cracks in the walls, slopes that allow cans to roll, and water in the basement are all things that shouldn’t be. These things have always been cause for my concern, even though a foundation company said the cracks are “just cosmetic,” the house was inspected and passed prior to closing, etc… None of these things mattered though. I have been convinced for two years, four months, and eighteen days that our house is sinking into the abyss, in spite of my husband doing his best to reassure me that, “The house is not sinking into the abyss.” In my mind, it certainly was.

I was entirely convinced that it was doing just that because of what I was experiencing, and my emotions were like a ship tossed on the sea. No one could convince me otherwise.

So back to the week of March 5: the first set of plumbers wanted to knock a block out of my foundation and go on an exploratory dig in my backyard. They told us, “That’s not how pipes work,” in response to us suggesting that there must be a broken pipe behind the wall somewhere. But they were totally willing to charge me over $7000 to make believe they were archaeologists in my backyard. No, thank you.

Through a series of events after this, that can only be God’s hand in all of it, a friend reached out to me with the name of her friend, who used to work for Hiller Plumbing. I called Hiller, who was able to send someone out within the same week, and that plumber found the broken pipe behind the wall, under the back patio, in about ten minutes. No exploratory dig necessary, and that is, in fact, how pipes work. Water always finds a way.

The plumber said it was entirely possible the pipe had been broken for some time, and when I asked him what damage that might have caused to the foundation of the home, he just said, Yes, ma’am.”

That plumber, in particular – Chase – knew a man by the name of Taylor Graham, who is a manager at DEC Fire and Water Restoration. He called him on my behalf, told him the situation, and put me in contact with Taylor, who came out that same week. I was thinking this would cost $50,000… $60,000. I don’t know. I just knew it would cost a fortune that we didn’t have.

By this point, Hubby was already overseas, but we had been able to take that entire Tuesday, March 7, with permission for him to not report to his unit until later that night, to run all over Huntsville on errands in order to get me power of attorney and to sign documents for pulling money from the equity in the house. We didn’t know how long the insurance would take to approve these repairs, if they would at all, and Hubby wanted to make sure I had money available and the power of his signature to do what I needed to do while he was gone. My mom also took out a personal loan as a temporary emergency fund for us while we waited for the equity money to fund. What a whirlwind. What a Godsend.

Taylor got to the house, looked at everything, took measurements, and gave me an estimate, which was about $50,000 less than my worst nightmare dollar amount. Basements leak, and even if the pipe were fixed (which it is now), sump pumps can still fail, and ground water can still get in the basement. We live in Alabama, and we have a basement. There’s a reason why basements aren’t popular here. They take on water. And the basement had obviously taken on water over the years, either from broken pipes or too much rain coupled with failed sump pumps. The basement walls had hydrostatic pressure all the way around, and regardless of sewer pipes being fixed, we still needed a permanent solution for keeping any more water away from the house, especially since the leaking sewer pipe created a significant void under the back patio, next to the exterior basement wall, of our home.

The sewer pipe had to be accessed via concrete cutter and jackhammer, and we still have a large rectangle-shaped hole in the back patio, but we can shower, wash dishes, and flush toilets with peace of mind that all that water and waste are finally going to the septic tank where they always belonged in the first place.

Hubby came home from overseas March 25. Our adjuster approved our claim for roof replacement on both the workshop and the house, and we are on the schedule with the roofing company. DEC Fire and Water Restoration worked for a week, jackhammering the basement and placing in a brand new, fancy sump pump system to keep water away from the house and out of the basement, and it was worth every penny.

The storm seemed to lull in our lives, and all seemed well for a few days.

And then our sweet yearling doe Maggie suddenly became ill and died within a 12-hour period of time. I left the house for the day with a seemingly happy, healthy goat, and when I returned, I had a deathly ill goat on my hands. In spite of my best efforts to save her, she succumbed to whatever toxin she had ingested. I believe she ate some moldy, listeria-contaminated hay off the ground that we had missed during hay feeder cleanup, which turned into encephalitis, which is what ultimately caused her death. She had no symptoms leading up to her last twelve hours, and I learned later that this particular strain of listeriosis in goats causes no visible symptoms until it is almost always too late, and even then, the survival rate is only about 30%, and even then, she may have never fully recovered to a full state of health. I miss that goat.

I am comforted that we have kept Maggie’e one and only baby, the fact that our other goats are healthy, and that we were able to love Maggie for as long as we did, even though on this side of things, the time feels all too short for my heart. But this is the nature of farming and of life and of the Christian walk. We may be pressed from all sides, and we may feel crushed to the point of death, but we are not forgotten, and we are never forsaken. And we’re not giving up. There is no quit in farming, and there’s no quit in walking with Jesus.

Once I have tasted and seen His goodness – once I have felt the weight of my own depravity and known just what it is from which He saved me – how can I ever turn back to the life I lived prior to knowing Him? It would be better for me to have never known Him at all than to turn away from Him now. I cannot, for I am persuaded that neither life nor death, nor height nor depth, nor anything can separate me from my Savior. Everything I once had, and anything I might gain in the future, is counted as loss compared to knowing Him. Nothing compares to Him. Absolutely nothing.

That doesn’t mean I don’t experience the pain and grief of loss, or that I don’t mourn and weep over hard things in this life, because I do. We are to weep with those who weep. We are to rejoice with those who rejoice. There are so many Biblical examples of Jesus being so very human and experiencing all of these things. He understands. He walked these same hard things. Maybe not leaking sewer pipes or shingles being blown off a roof, but certainly betrayal, loss, and grief. Certainly those most very basic human emotions He is well acquainted.

Yet He still set aside those emotions and chose His Father’s will and went to the cross set before Him, for God’s glory, for our hope, for our salvation. Jesus chose Truth over His feelings about His situation, and so must I.

Around the same time we lost Maggie, a second baby bunny escaped, never to return. We also lost one of our roosters, Rocky. We’ve been exposed to lice and had to shampoo our heads and shower at a friend’s house while we didn’t have the use of our own water at home. We have experienced relational issues and betrayal by someone we thought was a friend; we’ve been lied to and about; we experienced loneliness while Hubby was overseas, anxiety, work-related stresses, our water heater went out and had to be replaced, one of our boy goats got intestinal worms, so all the goats have been on wormer medication. The list goes on and on.

That’s not to say that we haven’t also experienced good intermingled with the bad. We celebrated birthdays, and we rejoiced on Easter Sunday celebrating Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and victory over death and hell. Rabbits have been born. We’ve sold goats and seen them off to new farms. There have been fun times with friends and family. We wrapped up our school year with our homeschool group with plenty of parties, games, and events. There have been so many good things, even while experiencing the hard.

But when the hard becomes unbearable, there is only one place I can go.

Inspired by King Hezekiah, written about in the Bible, I wrote out my many points of anguish over the last few months, in the form of a list, and presented them to the Lord. The list included nearly forty individual events. Some more minor than others, such as a squirrel in the attic, or a runaway, aggressive pit-bull that tried to attack me (and did attack my friend), but these things, when compounded, like interest, all figure into the total cost. Not a monetary cost, though in some cases it has been exactly that, but an emotional cost. Whether minor or major, all have been painful. All incredibly hard. All stressful. I do not have the space or the words to adequately describe them all in the detail they so richly deserve, but know that the valley we have been walking has been long and dark and painful.

And just when we thought we were coming out on the other side of things, our insurance adjuster hired a structural engineer to come inspect our house’s foundation to see what, if anything, is justified for the insurance to pay out on our claims.

The structural engineer made some suggestions for what needs to be done about the expanse of open air underneath our back patio, and if things go the way he writes up in his report, we may end up needing the back patio excavated, the void filled and stamped down, and everything re-poured. It was also posed that holes could be drilled into the patio and then filled with some kind of chemical foam that expands to fill the void. We are currently waiting to hear the final decision on that from the adjuster.

While the structural engineer was at our house, he found something else we never expected. Termite damage. Thirty-year-old termite damage that was never disclosed prior to our closing in 2020. Termite damage that would have allowed us to renegotiate our offer letter to the sellers, asking them to repair the damage; cause the VA to put funding on hold until the damage was fixed; and barring all of that, the ability to walk away from the home. The termite letter we received from the termite company states there was no current infestation nor was there ever a previous infestation. However, the house – and the point where termites were dwelling in the house – had been treated by the very company that did the termite inspection in 2020, and the report states that there is paperwork on file at the office testifying to that fact, not that we are allowed to see that paperwork because it’s not in our name. The way the termite letters reads to us is: “there was never a termite infestation, but the home owners did their due diligence to prevent one.” We took them at their word, and nothing else was ever disclosed to us. So we never looked for damage because we had no reason to think we should.

So who did I call when I found out my house has old termite damage and structural damage as a result? Taylor Graham.

Prior to Taylor coming back to the house and giving an estimate, some friends who have been walking this road with us all this time asked how I was doing, given everything. And I told them the truth: that Hubby and I woke up Wednesday morning in peace. Whatever the outcome, I told Hubby I believed that God would provide the means because He has it all in His hands. I wanted to walk in the victory of calm assurance that no matter what, the battle belongs to God and He already has the answer. So I was just going to trust and choose peace, hope, and joy. I chose to believe the truth of God’s Word over my present feelings about everything we were experiencing.

The next day (yesterday) Taylor came to the house.

He has a plan for fixing the structural issues, which includes new steel beams, new 2x8s, sister joists, and removing the weight from the old beam by transferring it to new ones. And it’s all going to cost what we feel is reasonable and within our financial means. Hallelujah! That work is set to begin May 8.

The structural engineer also found some old windows that are failing and allowing water to get inside the outside wall of the house on the same side of the house with the old termite damage.

Sharp Roofing and Construction came this afternoon and gave us an estimate. It’s all within our financial means, with some to spare.

All of these things are married to each other. The failing windows caused rainwater to get into the outside wall and into the subfloor of an upstairs bedroom, which is why we had to replace subfloor in January 2021. The water damage allowed the termites, which caused structural issues on that side of the house, which is why that part of the house’s flooring slopes off in a strange way that I always thought meant we were sinking into the abyss. Well, we are, and we aren’t. We are in the sense that that side of the house has damage and needs repair. And we aren’t in a much larger sense, because while Taylor was at my house this past Monday, he told me something I never knew, and even he didn’t understand its significance until after he told me.

Taylor told me this, and I’m paraphrasing our conversation, but it went something like this:

Taylor: Every time my guys do a job, they send me texts complaining about the difficultly of the job.

Me: Did they complain about my house? (Referring to the installation of the underground sump pump system)

Taylor: Oh, yeah! They said that (and here he proceeds to tell me about a previous job at a house with a monolithic slab that proved to be one of their most difficult jobs to date) your house was more difficult than that one.

Me: Why is that?

Taylor: Because they hit rock when they were jackhammering. It took them so many days longer on this job than we originally anticipated because they had to chisel away at rock underneath your house. Your house had footers poured on top of stone, and then they poured a slab on top of that.

Me: … Are you serious? I’ve always thought because of the dips and slopes in the floor that my house is sinking into the abyss. (I even joked about it with the workers while they were here because they chiseled out a 3-foot hole in the basement for the sump pump, and I joked that they had found the abyss.)

Taylor: I’m serious. Your house is built on a rock. God put it there, and it’s not going anywhere. Your house is not falling into the abyss.

Me: … Not a rock… THE Rock.

The wise man builds his house upon the Rock, and the house on the rock stands firm.

““So everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, will be like a wise man [a far-sighted, practical, and sensible man] who built his house on the rock.”

Matthew 7:24

“Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God [which He has laid] stands [sure and unshaken despite attacks], bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His…”

2 Timothy 2:19

“But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen you [setting you on a firm foundation] and will protect and guard you from the evil one.”

2 Thessalonians 3:3

“Through [skillful and godly] wisdom a house [a life, a home, a family] is built, And by understanding it is established [on a sound and good foundation], And by knowledge its rooms are filled With all precious and pleasant riches.”

Proverbs 24:3-4

If we hadn’t experienced the storm that caused the roof damage, and if Hubby hadn’t been leaving with his unit to go overseas, he might not have been in the basement to look at possible storm damage, or working to get the water out of the basement at the same moment I was running the shower. If none of that had happened, we wouldn’t have connected the water to a broken pipe that night.

If my friend hadn’t personally known a plumber and hadn’t reached out to me with his information, I might not have called Hiller Plumbing. If Hiller hadn’t had someone available to send faster than any other plumbing company and hadn’t sent that particular plumber, I might not have been put in contact with Taylor Graham, who has fixed ground water issues and is going to fix my home’s structural issues from termite damage.

If we hadn’t been given the insurance adjuster we were assigned, and she hadn’t been a stickler for making sure everything was done slowly and correctly, she might not have hired the structural engineer she hired. Had there never been a broken pipe, there would have been no need to hire a structural engineer at all, and who knows how much more time might have passed before we knew about the termite damage.

Had she not hired that structural engineer, we wouldn’t have known about the past termite damage right now, and we wouldn’t have known about the windows that need repair.

And had we not had any of these things happen at all, which would have been so much more convenient for my life, I’d have always thought my house was falling into the abyss, and at least part of it may have eventually had even bigger issues down the road, and maybe that beam could have failed and caused the house to collapse.

Even finding the company that’s going to replace the roofs and windows was because I know someone at church whose brother owns a roofing and construction company.

I do believe that God has been holding up our house all this time, waiting until the time when all these things would be revealed to us. I don’t know why the timing of these things has taken over two years, but I do know that He is wholly good and knows best. He holds all things together. He holds me together. He even holds my house’s beams together, in spite of thirty years of termite damage and what the structural engineer called “crushing.”

So many unknowable, unseen pieces fitting together… that God saw. He knew the whole time. And even in all of this, in spite of the tough road we’ve been walking, God still saw fit to allow us to buy this house, this land, this farm. He didn’t stop us, and He certainly could have at any point. We asked Him time and time again for guidance and direction, and we are still confident in His good plan.

In all His sovereignty, He saw that it was good for all these things to happen, not because He wants us to go through difficult things for no reason, and not because He enjoys our pain. But because these trials will produce endurance and will grow our character and our faith.

“And not only this, but [with joy] let us exult in our sufferings and rejoice in our hardships, knowing that hardship (distress, pressure, trouble) produces patient endurance; and endurance, proven character (spiritual maturity); and proven character, hope and confident assurance [of eternal salvation]. Such hope [in God’s promises] never disappoints us, because God’s love has been abundantly poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

Romans 5:3-5

And because I had a specific conversation with Taylor, I know my house is built on a rock.

And I know it’s not just a rock. God put that rock in this place when He laid the foundations of the earth. He knew that someday a home would be built on it, and that someday that home would be mine. Long before I ever set foot in this home, God laid the foundation. He is the Rock. Jesus is the Chief Cornerstone. All things are by and for Him, and through Him all things hold together.

“My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ Name

On Christ the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand

In every rough and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the vale
When all around my soul gives way
He then is all my hope and stay

On Christ the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand

When He shall come with trumpet sound
Oh, may I then in Him be found
Dressed in His righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before the throne

On Christ the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand”

On Christ, the Solid Rock, I Stand (My Hope is Built on Nothing Less)

It’s not just that my literal home is built upon a rock in the ground, though that is an amazing word from God that proves He’s got me in His hands. It’s that my spiritual house – my very life and soul – is built upon the Rock of Ages. The mountains may be moved into the sea, and the ground beneath might crumble and give way, but I can hear my Father singing over me.

This is a confirmation of everything that Hubby and I have felt strongly about from the very beginning of starting this farm. It’s for His purpose, His glory, and His kingdom. It’s for ministry, whatever that looks like. Whatever He wants and wherever He leads.

My house is built on a rock and the Rock, and it will now and always, as long as we occupy this temporary place we call the earth, and for all of my days, this house (and specifically the block that leaked the shower water) will be an Ebenezer to me. Of God’s faithfulness. Of His love. Of his goodness.

“Great is Your faithfulness to me
From the rising sun to the setting same
I will praise Your name
Great is Your faithfulness to me”

“And I will build an altar
Stack it stone by stone
‘Cause every Ebenezer says I’ve never been alone
My faith will surely falter
But that don’t change what You’ve done
‘Cause every Ebenezer points to where my help comes from”