The Daily Hailey

FOUR YEARS AGO, it was at this time that Radisson flooded. I wanted to link up old posts but for some reason, lots of the photo links are broken, and they’re not exactly up to snuff. But I don’t need pictures to remember it well. We were gone for a weekend trip to visit family in Edmonton, and we arrived home late into the evening. It was dark, but we could see that we’d had a LOT of snow. The next morning, Brady left for work bright and early, as the snow was beginning to melt. I woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of people talking in my yard. You guys might remember all of this. I threw on a hoodie and sweats and made my way out there. A group of thirty or so people were in my yard, making a game plan of how to save my house from flooding, literally filling the basement with water.

By the end of that first day, we were surrounded by water. Our whole yard was filled with water, with sandbags surrounding the house tightly. Water was still waking its way through, but not as much as it would have without the sandbag barrier. Water splashed up against our basement windows. Volunteers hauled most of our basement into our living room, happily and willingly. We were on the news, more than a couple of times. So was Dekker, in his jammies. I was 4-5 months pregnant with Laela at the time. It was a long time ago, but its still so fresh in my memory.

God protected us. We didn’t get a drop of water in our home through that whole experience. I want to write about this today, because as my Facebook memories tell me, today was the day that I finally lost it. It all felt pretty surreal for the first few days, and we were powering through. But it was this day, four years ago, that I had my breakdown about the flood. I panicked and cried and went over every possible awful scenario in my head. It was a low low time. Probably one of the hardest things we had gone through at that time. I felt so isolated and afraid. But God was in control.

Like I said, that was so long ago, and we’ve wader through far deeper waters since then. FAR deeper. But God hasn’t bailed on us yet, keeping our heads above water, or at least bringing them back up when we dip down a little too deep at times. My God is so big, so strong and so mighty. There’s nothing my God cannot do.