This year has been anything but easy for us.

First, my wife lost her job when her entire department was eliminated and their responsibilities were pushed to other teams. Then I lost mine after accepting a new position that was supposed to give me more family time and better align with my goals. After I put in my notice, my former employer contacted the new company, some shady things happened behind the scenes, and the offer was rescinded. I wasn’t allowed to stay at my old job either.

Thankfully, my wife landed a great opportunity at Urschel, and that helped keep us afloat while we slowly burned through savings and I searched for a new career. I worked with several recruiters and eventually received an offer for a Process Engineer role in Wabash, Indiana. That company has been incredible throughout this transition—flexible, supportive, and understanding of the distance and the time away from my family.

About a month ago, we listed our house for sale so we could relocate somewhere between both of our jobs and finally live together full-time again.

Then tragedy hit.

The day before Thanksgiving, I came home from out of town and walked into our entire house underwater. Water was pouring from every drywall seam and light fixture. The floors were covered in a quarter inch of water. The entire upstairs was flooded. Our newly finished basement was completely ruined. Most of our clothes, shoes, appliances—everything—damaged or destroyed. The home is no longer livable and will take months of demolition and rebuilding.

Right now, we’re living day-to-day out of a hotel room while trying to figure out where we’re going to stay, how to keep things normal for our kids, and how to juggle school schedules and work through all of this.

But even with everything going wrong, we’re grateful we still have each other. We may not know what the next ten minutes look like, but we have our family and friends to lean on, and that means everything.

Thank you to everyone who has checked in, supported us, and helped us through this incredibly difficult time. We appreciate you more than you know.