The Year Our Family Received a Generator And Toilet For Christmas

It had been already been a very distressing year to our family, then some unfortunate events slid into place, that made it a year to remember (even though all we wanted to do was to forget it). The year was 2013.

The year started out like any usual year. We had planned a trip to visit my mom in South Africa during our summer. The stress of having to find economically priced flights and having to endure the 8 hours to London and then another 11 hour flight from London to Johannesburg always seemed worth it. Then followed the jet lag, the expectations of not only helping my mom with tasks she needed help with, but trying to accommodate all the visiting with friends and family. As you may tell, a visit to the country I was born in, was never a vacation. However, on our visit in 2013, we decided to spend one week in Namibia to get away from it all and to have some form of vacation. And what a wonderful time that was!

Ten weeks after our return from South Africa I received a phone call that no one wants to ever get: my dear mom had suddenly passed away! So, once again I packed my bags and flew back to South Africa with my siblings to bury our mom and to sort out the estate. Those were three nightmarish weeks. Between sorting through stuff, organizing a memorial service, and getting her apartment cleared out, we were exhausted and worn out.

When I returned, winter was just about upon us. We started hearing the term "polar vortex" from the meteorologists more often. It was cold and just got colder. And this was in December! Officially winter had not even started yet! We had ice storms and more ice storms. Then, just before Christmas, on December 21st we had a major ice storm. Between ice rain, freezing rain and ice pellets bombarding Michigan, everything literally froze. As if that wasn't bad enough, we started hearing trees around our house just snapping from the heavy layers of ice surrounding their branches. And then everything went dark and cold. We had lost power!

We stayed at our house for a day or two, because there was nowhere to go. All hotels were full and most of our friends had lost power as well. There was one friend who still had power. She lived about 30 minutes away and she opened her house to us. Even though it was crowded (her son and his family were already there as well), it was wonderful. The kids played together, we chatted, we exercised, and we laughed a bunch.

Of course Kevin was still working and had to drive around seeing his homecare patients. In between visits, he always went past our home to check on things. One day when he arrived at our home, he parked on top of our driveway to scrape the driveway and put down salt. But he did not realize, that it was so cold, that the ice that had melted from the salt, immediately froze again. Kevin got into the truck and carefully proceeded down the driveway. However, their was no carefully proceeding, there was only sliding now. Whoosh, the truck slid into the corner of our house!

Mind you, we had just renovated our bathroom the previous year, it is situated at that said corner of our house. Besides putting a gaping hole into our house, he heard gushing water as he got out of the truck. He immediately ran into the house and into our bathroom, and saw that he had decapitated the toilet and the water pipes. Without further ado he ran into the basement and saw a waterfall flowing down the wall. He turned off the main water supply valve. Then he had to seal the hole in the wall, and clean up all the water that had pooled up. He had to work fast, as it was very cold and he didn't want more damage to be caused by the water. He managed to temporarily seal the both the inside and the outside of the hole in the wall. (To this day, I'm not sure how he was able to get out of our driveway to drive to our friend's home.)

At this point we realized that we would have to purchase a generator. Christmas Eve was upon us, so we decided the best gifts for our family would be investing in a generator and purchasing a new toilet. It turns out that it wasn't going to be easy to find a generator. Everybody in Michigan needed and wanted a generator. But, first Kevin needed to replace two tires on his truck: as he was driving between two home supply stores, not one, but two of his tires decided to go flat. The cold had even gotten to them! Who wants to be a tire on a frozen road with no end in sight to the polar vortices? Kevin managed to find tires and had them put on, before his hunt for a generator took him to yet another home supply store. This time he parked right behind the truck that was delivering generators to the store and was able to snag a generator for us.

Meanwhile, on the same day, I started feeling really sick. I had a terrible headache and was just feeling unwell. I decided to go to an urgent care clinic and was promptly diagnosed with a urinary tract infection that was so bad, the doctor was shocked. I was given two heavy duty anti-biotics and was told to rest and drink a lot of water. Are you kidding me? These last two paragraphs all happened in just ONE day??

A few days after we had moved in with our friend, we received a text that power had been restored to our home. We were elated! I was feeling much better by then and we decided to try driving home. You have to remember that all the roads were like ice skating rinks and we did not know if they were even passable with possible downed powerlines or trees. But we made it home and we were thankful. Thankful for the hospitality of dear friends, thankful for having made it home safely, and thankful to be back in our own four walls (well, one band-aided wall and three healthy walls).

So even through 2013 is not a year I would like to have repeated, it was a memorable year and a good year! We ended up having our family Christmas with our Canadian family the Easter of 2014. We all still fondly remember that ChrEaster.

Having had two days of frigid weather days these past two days has flooded my mind with memories. Personally I would prefer warmer weather, but I am blessed to have many blankets to cover all our windows, a furnace that is still running, enough food, friends whom I can laugh with, and most importantly a Heavenly Father who is faithful and never changes! He provided enough for us in 2013 and He will provide enough for us in 2026!

For your unfailing love is as high as the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Psalm 57:10

Until next time, God bless