GratiTuesday - Tornadoes, Trees, and Tar Paper

A few months ago a mini-tornado cut a swath right through our yard.

It was rather crazy, really, but most of our town - even parts of our neighborhood - were totally untouched, but our yard looked like a wooden war zone.

During that storm, a huge piece of a tree came apart from the trunk, blew across our yard, and knocked our gutters off the house.  They weren't in great shape, so this wasn't incredibly difficult, but the tree piece managed to get only the gutters - our windows, roof, and brick remained intact.

Or so we thought.

A few weeks ago my husband asked a local roofing company to check the condition of our roof.  I hadn't thought too much about the roof in terms of the storm, but when all of our surrounding neighbors got new roofs due to hail damage, it seemed prudent to check.

We found that, if you knew what you were looking for, there were holes all over our roof.

That little caveat made me nervous about approaching the insurance company, but the agent's inspection turned up the same problem.

So today, when a van pulled into my driveway and roofing men started hopping out like clowns from a car, it was a very exciting - though noisy - event.

By lunchtime tomorrow, the job should be finished.  We won't worry about any further damage or what might happen should another hurricane blow through - we'll be dry now.

The ironic thing about all of this is that I was concerned about the age of our roof, anyway.  It definitely wasn't new, and while it wasn't terrible, even I could tell that its age was beginning to show.  Since we are currently in no position to replace a roof, I was beginning to worry about it.

As usual, I shouldn't have.  Who else but God could send trees flying about our house, damaging beyond repair the two things that needed to be replaced but were beyond our budget (shingles and gutters) and harm nothing else?

Today, I'm grateful for this:  a driveway full of roofing supplies, a messy roof, and the van load of men who are working to move all of this from the ground to the roof.

Tomorrow, I'll be even more thankful for the completed job and a dry, hole-free house.

What are you grateful for today?

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