Following a tornado that ripped through her Madison, Tennessee, neighborhood and dropped a huge tree in her driveway — just missing her house — Brandie Lee didn’t know where to start with the cleanup.
During the storm, she received a text from a neighbor saying, “Um, our shed is in your tree.” “This is like crazy,” Lee said. “That was when it was really hitting me, ‘This is a real tornado.’’’
The young homeowner admitted she was feeling overwhelmed after the storm. It was right about then, she recalled, she heard a knock at the door. It was an Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief volunteer, who traveled with a team to help clean up the damage.
Lee was just one of thousands of Tennessee residents who were on the receiving end of a storm that ripped through the Nashville area Dec. 9 destroying homes, damaging roofs, snapping power lines and trees like toothpicks — and tragically taking six lives.
Soon after the storm, Disaster Relief teams in Tennessee and Alabama were called on to assess the damage and help homeowners remove trees and other debris from their property.
While Lee noted she had done some charity work in the past, she’d never personally experienced that kind of help. She said it was a breath of fresh air compared to other visitors standing at the door.
“I’ve had so many people knock on my door and give me every quote you could imagine to clean up the tree,” she said. “I’ve only owned the house for two years, so this is all new territory for me.
“I was overwhelmed … and that’s when [one of the Disaster Relief volunteers] walked up and basically said, ‘Hey, we’re with Alabama Disaster Relief.’ I saw his little shirt said Southern Baptist Convention, and I was like ‘Yay!’
“It just really felt like the Kingdom of heaven coming to earth in the most true way for me, where they’re meeting a true need. I’ve just never been the one that … truly has this big need — and someone comes in and rescues me. … That was a true answer to prayer.”
Figuring out how to pay for costly repairs and how to pay an often pricey deductible is real issue for many homeowners — especially during the holiday season, said volunteer Dave “Barney” Self, a “Blue Hat,” who helped lead the team at Lee’s house.
“Most people can’t pay $10,000 to move a tree,” said Self, who has worked on Disaster Relief teams for more than 10 years, “but we can do it for them and help them out for free. … We’re able to come help them and minister to them. That’s what we want to do.”
‘Hope in the devastation’
Wayne Abbott, another Disaster Relief volunteer with the Alabama team, had an opportunity to pray with Lee on her deck and give her a Bible.
“Whatever we can do to honor and serve the Lord, we reach out in anyway we can,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard to be approached by people these days … and sometimes it’s in the midst of these tragedies that people really open up their hearts.”
Self noted a disaster like this, especially around the Christmas time, can be especially tough for children.
“Because this is the holiday season, I feel for the children who love to see Christmas decorations,” Self said. “[After a tornado hits a home] the decorations are gone. The Christmas trees in their homes … are gone.
But, he added, “If we know there’s a child, we pass out teddy bears to give them, to let them know somebody out there loves them. Christmas is not about Santa, it’s about Jesus. That’s what we share. Yes, there’s devastation, but there’s hope in the devastation.”
He added, “People say, why do you do it. I do it because that’s what Jesus said to do: Love your neighbor.”
