Floods are powerful--and deadly

Today I found out that "church"  is an active verb.

Yesterday morning, snug in my bed, I could tell this was no ordinary storm.  Usually, thunderstorms come quickly and pass over just as quickly.  You can hear the thunder in the distance, count the lag between the flash of lightning and the clap of thunder, and tell how far off the thunder is.  As the lag becomes shorter and shorter, the low pressure area is coming closer; the thunder clap and the lightning are almost simultaneous--and then the lag gets longer again as the storm passes on.

This storm was different.  The lightning and the thunder were almost simultaneous, again and again.  The rain came in torrents, and the storm stalled over New Braunfels.  We had 11 to 13 inches of rain in the course of about three hours.  San Marcos, a few miles to the north had one half inch; Canyon Lake a few miles to the west, a half inch.

Our friends Cathi and Craig--who live on the banks of the Guadalupe River--experienced a flood of epic proportions in their neighborhood.  As the waters raged behind their house (and then suddenly in their house) they heard the cries of a child coming from the river and Craig went into the turgid waters, already polluted from a sewage treatment plant that had been inundated, and rescued the 11 year old girl who had been camping in an area campground with her parents.  Later in the day she was reunited with her parents who had been swept downstream--her mother 5 miles away.

Craig and Cathi's house was basically destroyed, and today church members gathered at the house to begin the salvage operation.  All day long people slopped through the viscous, polluted mud in the house to rescue the items that had been perched above the high water line, to clean those pieces which could be salvaged, and to begin the monumental disposal operation.  I have rarely witnessed such acts of love--and hard work in the blazin sun on a hot and humid day.  

I watched a trash truck driver stop his route to allow us time to cram as much of the debris as possible into the truck.  I saw a stranger stop by to say that in the first recovery efforts yesterday afternoon, she had taken some of the goods to dry ground in her truck.  There was a bag of clothes in the materials; today she returned the clothes, all washed and clean.

Cathi sobbed in my arms as the tow truck came to take her ruined, flooded car away, and I found it hard to say anything because of the lump in my throat.

At noon a carload of Subway sandwiches arrived unexpectedly; bottles of cold (pure) water appeared throughout the day.

All day long, the mantra that went through my head were the words of the medieval St. Julian of Norwich:  "all will be well."  I know that all will be well, but in the midst of that kind of devastation it is almost hard to believe that things will work out.

In the meantime, however, watching the uncomplaining workers sloshing through the filth and destruction, I saw church in action.  Indeed, "church"  is an active verb.