After the historic Nashville flood in May of 2010, Emerson Eubank and Lili Parham’s home by the river near Opryland was in ruins. The official report from their homeowner’s insurance agency said their home was over 50% damaged, but they say it was more like “total devastation”. The interior of the home was completely unlivable because of the smell from the mold that had grown where the Cumberland River had run through their home. As a result, the home in which Lili had been raised since a child had to be completely torn down.
Emerson and Lili said they had to find some perspective to begin to recover from their grief. The perspective they gained was “we know our loss was great, but there were many others who lost family members and pets that day, too.”
After months of negotiations and approvals from government agencies and financial help from family, friends, FPC Nashville, Habitat for Humanity, The Community Foundation, and a private loan, they demolished the old home and began building one designed by Lili’s niece, Samantha Schneider, in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity.
Based on the home’s proximity to the Cumberland River and the grade of their lot, the home had to be built on concrete piers. Like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, their home now stands taller than any other on their river roadway.
Rev. Todd Jones was joined by FPC members Bobby and Dean Reeves, Ashley Hill, and Patricia and Don Heim to dedicate the home on March 6. They hosted a reception for the couple and the numerous friends, neighbors, and family members who came to celebrate this momentous day. FPC presented the family a bible (theirs had been lost in the flood) and a framed portrait of their niece’s architectural rendering of the home design with verses from Matthew 7:24 -25. “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.”
Lili said that getting to move into their newly built home right before Easter is a blessed reminder of the hope and new life God offers to each of us.
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