I was halfway home when the sky turned a sickening green and the wind kicked up. I pulled over to wait out the storm and my phone lit up.

It was a text from my brother

“Dad’s house is gone, we’re all okay, going to the hospital, call soon.”

When tragedy happens, there are a few moments before it becomes real. I got stuck in those moments trying to process the information. Tornado warnings came on the radio and I was almost deaf to them. I turned the car on and drove numbly to my mom’s house.

Approximately 1 million thoughts ran through my head while trying to process that my home of 18 years, and most of the things I owned, were more than likely gone. What if I had left 10 minutes earlier? Would I have been in the house? Would I have survived? Was my family really okay? I sat on my mom’s couch in the darkness and waited for someone to tell me what to do next.

My dad called after a while to explain everything and check on me. I wanted to rush to the hospital and be with them but he told me to stay where I was for safety. He informed me that while my brothers and stepmom were in the house making dinner, the 100 year old oak tree in our back yard had gotten ripped up in the winds and crashed into our home destroying it. My family had climbed out of a window to get free. They were hurt, but alive.

It was a miracle.

We spent the next few days clearing out what we could from the house and salvaging belongings by climbing in and out of windows. We moved into a hotel room. 7 people, 1 bathroom. We lived day to day by what the insurance company mandated. As a family of 5 teenage children who all worked and went to school, most of us hadn’t sat down together for dinner in years, let alone shared a bedroom.

It was a struggle. There were lots of tears and sadness and heartbreak that went into those first weeks of being homeless. We bounced around on relatives’ couches when we couldn’t take sleeping at the hotel. We made about thirty target runs to replace the things that we had lost. We tried to do things like go back to work, or get our nails done, so that we could feel normal again. We managed to get back on our feet. We moved into a rental home.

It’s been two years since this happened and now I feel ready to talk about the good side of losing everything.

1. We stopped focusing on ourselves and focused instead on our family: We sat down to eat dinner together for the first time in years. We comforted each other and shared with each other and we even sat around a fire pit with coffee having a conversation with each other. We saved each other food from the continental breakfast and took turns walking the dog.
2. We took a break from work and spent the time with each other: It took a tree falling on us to finally get us all to take a day off of work. None of us had called in sick in years and we took the opportunity to do so. We slept in and went to lunch together. We visited our grandparents. We went to the pool with our friends. We realized that we had been taking our time for granted and started to loosen up a bit.
3. We purged ourselves of a lot of useless crap: Old report cards and ugly sweaters all went into the trash. We got rid of furniture and broken picture frames and a TV that we had spent too much time in front of. We threw out boxes of things that my grandma had brought to us over the years and old receipts and a lawn mower that my dad said he would fix when I was seven.
4. We found out that even a house collapsing cannot destroy the ugly lamp that my grandma gave us: But we damn sure pretended that it did.
5. We figured out the best way to build up our stash of toiletries from the hotel: Drivebys on the maid’s cart became a regular sport for us. We’re still using soap that we saved up and shampoo samples. My brother still holds the record for most towels stolen at once by fitting twelve in his shirt before the maid turned around.
6. We finally met a Jake from State Farm: When we heard our insurance agent’s name, we almost lost it. But he got us through a lot of the hard stuff and was a big advocate for us when we needed it.
7. We got my sister to do some yard work: This was something that none of us thought was possible, as she had resisted doing any our entire childhood, but apparently when the going gets tough, impossible things can happen.
8. We became a family again: The days of us ignoring each other and simply existing in the same house were over.

Fast forward to a year and a half later and we are still in the process of rebuilding our home. We cleared out the tree and the debris, and ripped down the rest of our home with bulldozers. We cried and laughed and hugged. We said goodbye to years from our lives and the stains that we left on the carpet, and the shutters that my stepmom had never liked.

We took a mess and rebuilt it from a strong foundation.