Of all the pictures and ideals we carry with us about our homes—as sanctuary, refuge, haven, castle, fortress, rest stop, pit stop, growers and nomads or whatever—none of them is a snapshot of the home hit by natural disaster. It doesn’t have to be the big act-of-God type of disaster, either—the hurricane/earthquake/tornado type of disaster. There are the everyday types...the rainstorm that finds a leaking roof and floods the house...the pipes that fracture and do the same. The busted sewer line that is horrific. The tree that falls over from the wind and crashes through the roof. The fire that ravages our treasured place. Everyday, all-the-time, matter-of-course nightmares.

So what do we do then? We call our insurance agent, and he calls people to come out and deal with it. It’s called mitigation and reconstruction, and it’s a big industry. People come to our homes, and they start to take the pain away. I know a lot about this as I work with an incredible company called Paul Davis (www.pdrestoration.com) that has lived and breathed in this category for more than 40 years, works across the United States and Canada, and leads the industry.

What is special about Paul Davis is how they hold a deep and reverential consciousness about their work. They are the first step back to normalcy for people whose lives have been turned into crisis by forces often outside of their control. The lack and loss of control creates helplessness as dreams are shattered, and the tomorrow that was seen just today turns into the prospect of an odyssey beyond normal comprehension. At Paul Davis, they believe their voice is the voice that says to us, “It’s going to be okay.” Their world is one of moving crisis to calm, and they make it real through both care and craftsmanship, meshing compassion with professionalism, trust with performance. To Paul Davis we are not a disaster, our home is; we are to be held and helped, and their job is to steward and shepherd us back into a home made whole and healthy again.

What lives in these times of disaster is an opportunity for people who serve our home, and us, to surprise us and win our admiration. It is, surprisingly, and literally, amid the darkness of water or smoke, a moment to redeem our ideas about what service really means. If service is indeed a cycle of giving between giver and receiver, then the moment at which we meet a company like Paul Davis is a moment in which the giving of service—genuine, authentic, grounded and real—reassures in a catalytic way that people doing genuine good can triumph over natural ill. It may not be possible for us to connect with this in the moment, for the shock, grief, disbelief and anger of the episode can, and will, often outweigh any other insights, but that should not stop Paul Davis from aspiring to take a moment of tragedy and turn it toward the light on the horizon. Indeed, the inspiration at Paul Davis is that every person who engages with us in the company, from technician to executive, should strive to turn this moment into being a representative of doing good, and being good. The company's motto is “We Transform Lives,” and that says everything about their connection to our moment with them.

None of us expects our home to become our purgatory, and that is why disasters in and to it shatter our confidence and trust about the role of home in our lives. At Paul Davis, they do more than restore the home; they give us back our love for the idea, passion and reality of the special container in which we and our families dwell. It is a brand with a deep resonance in these times of change; a brand that speaks to home, hope and health.