Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

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The important work

It is raining this morning and I cannot stop thinking about Houston and southeast Texas. I turn on the news at 7 a.m. and I cry as people walk their families through waist-high waters carrying a bag or two or less. My heart hurts for the people still waiting for rescue, and for those who are spending all their energy and more rescuing, saving, helping. The police chief crying for his lost colleague was almost too much for me to bear.

I am 1500 miles away and all I can do is watch and pray and give a little money to organizations on the ground, equipped to do this work. The rain reminds me that all the miles in the world aren’t a barrier for compassion. Even if it feels like doing nothing, keeping a tender heart is important work.

Because one day, it could be us.

Photo by Brandon Wong on Unsplash

—

I remember the day the waters rose here. A storm stalled off the coast of New Jersey and dumped buckets of rain on southeastern Pennsylvania. We lived in a rental house at the time, and our landlords, who lived next door, kept the sump pump in our basement running. We would be fine, we thought.

Then the water rushed down the hill behind our house and into the basement where we stored some of our belongings. The water came and the pump pushed it out and all was fine until 2 a.m. when government leaders turned off the power to the town when flood waters threatened the main source of electricity.

The power went out at our house and our kids, who were just babies at the time, woke up and we could do nothing as the water in the basement kept rising. Friends across town thought they would have to evacuate their house. We wondered if we would have to do the same and where would we go?

I think about these things as I watch from afar as families decide whether to stay or go, what to take or not, and where to go. When the sun rose the next morning, we had 30 inches of water in the basement, our belongings floating like toys in a pool and we were clueless.

We felt shame. Our landlords had stayed up through the night bailing water from their basement, and we sensed that perhaps they thought we should have done the same. We spent part of a morning with friends who still had power, and the church down the street had a gas stove and offered a hot meal. I will never forget these simple acts of kindness. How sharing a living space for a few hours and eating hot food pushed away some of the despair.

At 8 o’clock the next night, when we had decided to go to bed because it was dark and we had no power and what else was there to do, the fire department showed up to pump out our basement. These men had worked all day and night and were still going strong. It was humbling to be served in such a way.

Then the real work began. The washing and drying of clothes. Here, too, friends and neighbors stepped in to help. We hung everything we could out on the line to dry, and we amassed bags and bags of garbage. We mourned the loss of books and yearbooks and all sorts of possessions that we could not save and maybe never should have had.

The cleanup took days and we had small children and my husband was still in school and our souls were weary from other battles were fighting. It seemed too much to bear.

We had plans the following weekend to fly to Colorado for my cousin’s wedding and the kids were staying behind with grandparents. It seemed an inappropriate time to leave, but what were we supposed to do? I have no regrets. It was the last time I saw my uncle alive, and it was the kind of reprieve we needed. Still, we were aware of how it looked, to abandon our rental for a long weekend while it was still in need of cleaning.

The mold on the basement posts never did go away completely, and our relationship with the landlord/neighbors did not quite fully recover. Two years later we would move to another town, another rental. We left the house behind but the memories remain. I used to remember every time it rained. The anxious feelings would rise and I would send my husband to the farmhouse basement to check for water.

Enough years have passed that I am calmer during a storm now.

But today, I feel a fraction of what the city of Houston and its surrounding communities feel.

This, too is important work.

—

Remembering keeps us connected to each other in times of suffering. Of course, I first must have experienced suffering or at least be able to imagine what it would be like if it were me. “I can’t imagine” is a phrase I’m trying to strip from my vocabulary because too often what it really means is “I don’t want to imagine” or “I refuse to think about what it could be like.” (Sometimes, it is true that we cannot imagine, but the phrase itself is not terribly helpful.)

It is hell to suffer and no one wants to have to suffer. The silver lining, though, is that suffering softens us to others when they experience it.

Twelve years ago, I was working for a newspaper when Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana. I don’t remember what I felt because I was working and my fiancé was deployed or preparing to deploy to Iraq. I didn’t know anyone in Louisiana, and I had very little life experience to connect me to that event. (Although I did grow up in a house near a creek that flooded our basement more than once. I was young and only remember the things we lost, not the hours of work my parents put in cleaning up those messes.)

Seventeen years ago (or so) I found myself in North Carolina tearing walls out of a house that had been under water in another hurricane. The team of college students I was with worked hard for 8-10 hours a day helping with flood relief and meeting the family who was living in a FEMA trailer near their house. I knew I was doing something good but I still lacked empathy. I was there to work and to help, but I never really thought about what it might feel like to lose everything.

—

I have no answers or wisdom or grand plans. All I know is I don’t want to look away or forget. We are not yet a week into this disaster and already the news reports are changing and shifting. Our attention span as Americans, especially, wanes easily and we’ll soon move on to other worries and concerns.

But in Houston, the worst is far from over. When the waters recede, the hardest work will just be starting. And they will need us just as much then as they do now.

I don’t know what it will look to show up for Houston and Texas and the other areas affected by Harvey but I want to be ready, in heart, mind, body and soul.

I’m generally unprepared for crisis or tragedy, on a personal or global level. It doesn’t matter what it is: kids get sick or an appliance breaks or a loved one dies … there often is no room in my schedule, plans or finances to respond the way I want to.

Maybe you can relate.

I tend to live in a bubble of thinking whatever trouble someone else is experiencing will somehow skirt my life. But the truth is trouble finds us all eventually, and we will need each other.

So, what can I do today living in the light of that truth?

I only have the question. Answers will take more time.

But the asking is part of the work, too.

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The gathering and the waiting

I used to think people standing along the side of a busy road was weird. WHAT are they doing? I would ask myself. I haven’t always lived in a place where public transportation is normal and available. After four years in this county, buses are a regular sight and I no longer think it’s strange when people are standing alongside a road in what looks like an unusual place.

In fact, at least once a week, I’m one of them. I’m just a girl standing next to the road hoping the bus will stop for me. Usually, I’m the only one at my stop, but there are other stops on other routes that attract a lot of riders at the same time.

Even after months of riding the bus once a week or so, I’m still not 100 percent confident. I have a real FOMO (fear of missing out) which also manifests as fear of being abandoned, so even when I am early according to the bus finder app, I still wonder if maybe I missed it. Or if maybe this would be the one day the bus doesn’t come.

So far, the bus has never let me down. It might be late or on time, and I might have to wave my arm to make sure the driver sees me, but I have always met the bus at my stop at the time it was expected.

—

As comfortable as I am with groups waiting at bus stops, a once-a-year gathering of people along an interstate-like highway still leaves me anxious and a little weirded out.

Every Mother’s Day, people pull their cars onto the side of this busy highway and pull out lawn chairs and blankets and picnic lunches. We have yet to watch from that side of the fence, preferring to set up our viewing party inside the park adjacent to the highway, but it is a spectacle nonetheless.

We are all gathered to watch a truck convoy but that isn’t evident from the road. Sometimes the pre-show is as entertaining as the show itself. Some travelers in cars or vans will honk at the spectators. Others lower their windows, stick their heads out and wave, as if we have assembled simply for them. (Confession: I’m sometimes angry at this because the purpose of our gathering is serious AND fun but it is not a joke. Of course, the average passer-by wouldn’t know this. Still, I’m annoyed.)

I would think it was odd, too. In fact, the first year we lived here, we heard the sirens and truck horns and wondered what was on fire. What tragedy was happening in our neighborhood. It was nothing of the kind. It was hundreds of trucks spending a Sunday afternoon making wishes come true and raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The next year, we watched. And every year since, we’ve made it a priority on Mother’s Day.

If I think too much about it, I’m overwhelmed by the emotion. Inside these hundreds of trucks are families fighting serious illnesses in their kids. And on this one day, we celebrate their journeys by treating them like superstars. Kids wave from the passenger windows of big rigs and fire trucks and even though we aren’t close to the road, we can see their smiles.

This gathering of people on the side of the highway is weird, but it’s important, and I’ll do it again and again.

—

Cristina Lavaggi via Unsplash

I feel like life is more a waiting time right now than an accomplishing time. I used to call it “being stuck” and felt it was my job to get unstuck, but I’m tired of making an effort at the wrong things, so I’m trying to let the waiting time be a kind of gift. A chance to pause and evaluate and do the necessary work but to not force myself out of this season.

Waiting sounds so passive, almost lazy, especially when you live in a culture that is all about doing and doing more. I’m anxious even as I write these words. I’m certain our life looks lazy to some but with a limited amount of energy (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual), I’m no longer interested in spending it on the wrong things. And if that means NOT doing for a time, then I’m going to be (mostly) okay with that.

The thing about waiting is that if one person does it, it looks a little nutty, right? If one person set up their lawn chair on the side of a highway, we would think they were not quite right in the head. But when many people do it, the attitude shifts. Instead of Look at that fool, we think I wonder what’s going on.

All the noise of the truck convoy drew one woman from the park to the edge of the fence. “What is this?” she asked. And we told her. Another couple walking through were concerned because cars weren’t letting the ambulances through. “They are part of the convoy,” I said.

To the casual observer, it’s a confusing scene but it’s hard to ignore.

—

I’ve written a little bit about my struggles with church right now. It’s complicated, that’s all, and there is no easy answer for my questions, but this whole gathering and waiting thing pricks something in my soul.

We gather, yes, on Sundays and sometimes on other days as people professing similar beliefs. We claim to be people all going somewhere but sometimes I wonder if we will miss the bus when it comes.

When I stand at the bus stop, sometimes I bring a book along, if I think I’ll have a long wait. But usually, I tuck it back in my bag because I don’t want to miss the bus’s arrival. I track it on the bus finder app, but even then, it’s rarely accurate. The expected time is usually close but the little bus icon on my screen is never in the right place. I could easily miss the bus while I’m standing at the bus stop.

Joshua Davis via Unsplash

I think this is true of my church experience. I‘m showing up at the right place but I am not waiting for God to show up. I am distracted. By my kids. By the other people. By my own thoughts. I think I have convinced myself that God is showing up anywhere but here so why on earth am I in this place? I often feel like I’m at a bus stop where the bus hasn’t picked up in ages and even if it did, I have no idea where we’re going or even if I want to go there. (This is a commentary on church at large not a specific experience.)

Going to church because it’s what we do is not enough for me right now. I am on the lookout for the places where God is showing up and I will find them in the gathering and the waiting. I need the church to show up in surprising places, to be weird enough that it gets noticed by people who otherwise wouldn’t pay any attention at all. I need it to be a place where we’re as comfortable with waiting as we are with doing, where we wait together on this shared journey.

I don’t know how to end this post on a high note, which is what I always feel pressured to do, especially when I talk about the church and my complicated relationship with it. I love the people we have known through church and there are many, many situations we have been in where we would not have gotten through without a church family. We have much for which to be grateful.

But I still struggle with belonging, and I always want to blame myself. I know I can be critical. I know I have failed to do my part in the church. I know I’m not an easy person to get to know.

I just don’t understand why I feel so much more a sense of community when I’m not in church.

There. That’s the heart of it. I don’t know what comes next only that I want to be in church less and less and I want to be on the lookout for God more and more. Even if it’s in unusual gatherings and extended times of waiting.