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In August of 2019, it felt like God was testing my faith. For over a year, prior to August of 2019, my husband and I had been discussing getting new furniture and flooring in our house, as it was time for a change. We actually had a few things that needed “refreshing.” It added up to a costly little list, so we decided we would just probably do one project at a time. We wanted to do the flooring in the living room first. It had carpet and we wanted to put a wood floor down. On this 3rd Sunday in August 2019, we had gone to church, came home and were kind of just hanging out. Austin, our son, was home visiting from the Marines and was leaving the next day to go back to NC, so we were just enjoying time with him. I was in the kitchen, and Scott and Austin were in the living room. It had been a cloudy, fairly hot morning/early afternoon already, but then it cooled down, which as we know from living in Montana, usually means hail is coming! We had had a few rough summers of hail prior to this particular summer, so we were used to it. We heard a loud crash and as I came running into the living room, Austin and Scott were at the window trying to see what was happening. The window glass was literally breaking into pieces, and ice and water was coming through the window sideways. I should have videoed it (hindsight) because it really was so hard to believe this was actually happening. A sound then came from the kitchen and we ran to find the window above the sink breaking, as well, with ice and water coming through. It kept happening – all of the windows on that particular side of the house were breaking, and ice and water were coming through. It happened so fast, but in my mind I can see it all as if it is happening in slow motion. I am not good in a crisis and realized our house was literally crumbling around us. It wasn't, but it felt like it was. I began to cry. I was trying to find a place to take cover because the wind, I'm not kidding, it felt like a tornado, was blowing debris at high speed – mostly glass, chunks of ice, and water through the now vacant windows. Scott told me to go in the bathroom and shut the door. He said, “I know what you are feeling right now, but I just can't go there.” Scott and Austin were in cleanup/save the house mode. I went into the bathroom and began to pray. I also then started praising God. The song, “Praise You in the Storm,” popped into my head and I began to sing it and just praise God and pray for safety of all of my family and our animals. I was praising God in the storm, literally! The words, “every tear I cry, you hold in your hands,” really struck me from the song. God was there with me in that bathroom telling me everything was going to be alright. The storm did not last long, but there was so much damage done to our property, it was overwhelming! We immediately checked on Scott's parents, as we all live on the same property, just across the way. They had damage too, but thankfully they did not have as many windows on the side of their house that got the damage. Scott and Austin worked to put up boards over our windows. The electricity was out for a long time, so Scott set up generators at our house and his mom and dad's, to keep the freezers, etc., going. In assessing the damage, my son's brand-new car that he had had for 3 days, was completely totaled from the hail. My car had one whole side that looked like I had thrown golf balls at it and dented it all over. I called it the Phantom of the Opera car – one side was ugly and the other side still looked beautiful. The windows on the cars that were on the side where the storm hit were shattered. The outside of our house looked like a war zone. There were ice chunks all over outside and inside, and the side of our house, along with sheetrock chunks and siding, looked like it had been shot up with a gun all over! We found some siding clear down our field a few days after the storm! Our camper was totaled in the ordeal, and our roof was completely torn up. It truly was a disaster area on just that one side of the house/yard! We had to have shoes on to walk in the house because the floor was full of glass and water. We put a bunch of bath towels down and made a path to walk on, with shoes, and it would literally crunch every time you put your foot down. Our couch served as a sort of buffer, taking a lot of the glass from the window, as well as a lot of water. It really was devastating and overwhelming, but none of us got hurt, not even the animals! Praise God! I said, “Was that a mini tornado that just hit us?” Scott assured me it was not, but he did say it was the worst hailstorm he had ever seen! That storm proved to be one of God's blessings in disguise for us. The insurance covered the cost of everything to be replaced, so we got our new flooring in our kitchen and living room, our new furniture, and we got a new camper the next year. God does work in amazing ways! His ways are not always the ways we would choose, but He can sure turn things around and give us blessings far more than we deserve! I still get a little skittish every time it attempts to hail in the summer since 2019, but I know if I stay faithful to God, He will provide everything I need and He is always with me. I will continue to praise Him in every storm in my life because I have seen His work, and it far exceeds anything I could ever do! Do not forget to praise the Lord, even when things seem unfixable, and always be faithful to Him, and I promise you He will reward you in ways you cannot even begin to fathom!