I was happily sitting in an elective class at an out of town conference when I received a text from my husband.

“Where can I find the information on our homeowner’s insurance?” it read.

Immediately, I stepped out of my class to call him knowing that there was no amount of explanation I could put in a text that would be easily understood.

If he needed the insurance, it had to be bad and I knew, I wouldn’t be able to focus on my classes until I heard the story.

Apparently, after a difficult day, he threw a load of clothes into my 20 year old washer and headed to bed…without checking on it.

Have you ever had something break but it still worked so you kept using it? You know, the thing you have to explain to other people first?

• “Hey, you have to lift up on the door handle if you want to lock it when you leave, okay?”
• Or, “Don’t forget to hold the handle down on the toilet so it flushes?”

Well, mine was “remember to check the washing machine if you change the load size because it will just keep filling if the knob isn’t clicked perfectly into place.”

Evidently, my husband’s hard day took a toll on him because, even though he knew that our washer needed to be babysat, he completely left it on its own. And it did what any kid left on their own would do…played all night. Or, more appropriately, ran the fill water all night.

It ran gallons upon gallons of water onto the floor because, when my husband changed the load size without checking that the button was clicked into place, it didn’t have a signal to turn off.

THE NEXT MORNING my husband stepped out of our ground floor bedroom to sopping carpet in the living room. Quickly realizing what he had done, he ran to the laundry room but it was too late, of course. There was water from the laundry room to the kitchen.

Water covered the floor in the guest bathroom, coat closet, laundry room, living room, kitchen and dining room. It had drained down the AC vents to the crawl space under the house. It also sat so long that it soaked the wood layer under the linoleum and soaked the carpet in both my master bedroom closet and a utility closet under the stairs.

It was a ridiculous mess!

He had called an insurance person who told him he needed the homeowner’s insurance information, which is when I first heard about the situation. I have lots of hardwood which sat for hours covered in water so he knew a disaster cleanup crew was going to be required.

Disaster cleanup arrived, sucked up the pooled water and quickly put dryers on the floors in an attempt to save them. I arrived home to these loud blowers several days later. The wood planks were already beginning to warp.

At this point in OCTOBER, I had no idea that the process would not be completed until late in JANUARY.

They finally realized that the hardwood couldn’t be saved so they yanked out the planks and used the dryers to dry the sub-flooring. Of course, the wet carpets had already been pulled out. The loud, ugly dryers were all over the house for several weeks.

All the kitchen appliances had to be pulled out for the hardwood so we went without a stove until the day before CHRISTMAS, which is also when they moved my refrigerator out of the living room and back into the kitchen. I thought about putting lights on the refrigerator and just subbing it for the Christmas tree but my daughter objected.

Since my hardwood floors are actually sanded and sealed, it required us to be out of the house the week before Christmas. We did enjoy our week spent at a cute little AirBnB in Nampa, though. It was a quiet respite from the chaos that had plagued our home for the last eight weeks.

The restoration company we worked with was fantastic and even our insurance company was easy to work with and covered all the repairs and our rental expense. The guy in charge of the job knew how much we wanted it to be done by Christmas so he worked tirelessly to get his part done before then: we had a stove to cook Christmas dinner put in on Christmas Eve and the fridge was moved out of the living room before my guests arrived…whew.

It would still be another month before the job was complete.

For three months we dealt with this but, it felt like a year. It was frustrating and stressful to work through; life doesn’t stop just because you encounter a trial. We had to take care of our responsibilities during the busy holiday season while navigating this situation and also a bicycling accident and the full cleanup and repair of a rental home destroyed by the world’s worst tenants.

I felt like Lieutenant Kaffee in A Few Good Men…”and the hits just keep on coming.”

I would love to say that I had a good attitude through the whole event and that I walked continually aware of God’s power and ability working in my life…alas, those times were there but were often buffeted by frustration, sadness and even anger-fueled questions like, “Why?” and “Are you kidding me??”

But, I learned something powerful in those few months, something that I had heard and understood but not learned to practice: my attitude, good or bad, was my choice.

Yes, I could choose to be angry, frustrated or sad because those were true feelings. And, they were totally justified by the situation. But, when I chose to sit in those feelings, it took a toll on my soul. Bitterness, disappointment and self-pity arise just as easily from justified feelings as they do from unjustified feelings.

I could also choose to be grateful. Grateful my husband wasn’t hurt more seriously. Grateful my house could be repaired. Greatful for all the ways I saw and experienced God’s grace during the trying moments.

So, I chose to own my responsibility and the privilege of it. When I felt discouraged by the challenges, I acknowledged the negative feelings in light of my gratefulness. When things were moving easily, I stopped to thank the Lord for His abundant blessings. If I got caught in a self-pity spiral, I chose to rest in God’s grace…but not gonna lie, it usually took a minute.

In the end, amidst a prolonged season of challenge, that experience yielded growth for my soul: a new understanding, a new freedom and…a new washer!