The creek done riz.
As I’m sure everybody is well aware by now, a once-in-lifetime (please, Lord) hurricane has ravaged the Appalachian mountains. When I saw the weather forecast a few days before, and realized what was about to happen, I was afraid it was going to be as bad as Hugo, the only real hurricane I’ve seen all the way up here in my 45 years in the world. I was ten years old at the time, and it was pretty bad for our area.
Five days later, I’m sitting here just wishing it had only been as bad as Hugo. My heart is breaking for my home, and for all of the counties around us. I expected a hard time, but I really never imagined anything like this.
Some of the worst hit areas are the places I grew up, and the places my extended family still live. I’ve lived a county south from what will always be my real home for the last twenty years. We are devastated here, as well. The GAH household is safe, and quite comfortable, and I thank God for that. Most of my extended family are accounted for and alive, with a few still out of contact. Many of my loved ones are not what I would call “safe”, being stuck behind mudslides and downed trees, destroyed roadways, and debris. They lack electricity and access to care if they should have an illness or accident.
I have been grateful for all of the help rescuers and suppliers have given us in locating and supplying the needs of family, making sure they’re alive and fed, at least. Most of our relatives’ and neighbors’ situations have been far worse than ours. Our power was only out for 42 hours. Our home is basically untouched, except for the driveway and some ditches that need work. The road to town is also mostly sound, except for a couple of shoulders that look sketchy.
Other neighbors have not been so…I don’t know. Blessed? Lucky? Let’s say “sheltered”. I know that God is as much with them, and doing for them what is in His loving will, as He is with and for us!
Our church frequently sings this hymn:
God leads His dear children along.
Some through the waters,
Some through the flood,
Some through the fire,
But all through the blood.
Some through great sorrow,
But God gives a song
In the night season and all the day long.
Who can fathom why He has some go through fire, and some through literal flood? His ways are higher than ours, and He is working in all of it, I know. I know it, because I have been through seasons of sorrow before, and it is true that He gives a song. It is a supernatural thing, the joy that a person receives in the midst of difficulty. There is no explaining it, except that God is Love.
There are helicopters and private airplanes flying over us constantly, rescuing and supplying the back roads, heroes with all sorts of vehicles and animals and on foot trying to get to those in need. Lives have been lost close-by.
There is much to grieve.
There is also much to be grateful for, even with all the difficulties. If anything good can be gleaned from such an upheaval, it is in that gratitude that I see people constantly expressing–for life, for safety, for provision, for small kindnesses and the human touch. We often fail to express or even feel in normal times the gratitude that we should always have in our hearts. We can say grace before every meal for a lifetime without truly stopping to dwell on how fragile our existence really is. We can sit across the table every day from people who do us good and love us dearly, and even say “thank you” to them, without really feeling the gratitude we express. Gratitude as social convention will be a thing of the past for a very long time. We all really, really mean it right now. Knowing the human longing for normalcy, I won’t say it will be a thing of the past forever. We will, and for this I am also thankful, go back to a less emotionally raw, more normal way of life. We can’t help that. For now, I am just grateful for the ability to feel gratitude!
Above all, I have found myself grateful in all of this that God has given me a little bit to share, a heart for praying fervently, and hopefully the ability to help others in meaningful ways, poor as my contributions might be in the grand scheme of things. So before I go on to the point of this post (ostensibly, the race), I want to say again,
THANK YOU!
God bless all who help, provide, protect, and preserve all those in danger. Thank you to everybody who is contributing, right down to the prayers you pray, though you have nothing else to give. I believe in spiritual warfare, and we need angels and God’s hand intervening more than ever. There is evil afoot, enjoying and mulitplying the sufferings of the innocent. There are reports of looters and robbers holding people at gunpoint, and vandals slashing the tires of line trucks and supply trucks. PRAY, friends. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen strange, miraculous things happen, and found out later that someone was specifically praying at that moment. You’ll never know, this side of Glory, what your prayers have accomplished. So pray!
Now, about that race you funded. The Black Bear Half Marathon was to be run in beautiful Hendersonville on October 13, but like the rest of the mountains, Hendersonville is in no shape to host such a thing this month. All of our communities are going to be hurting for a long while. But we will rebuild. When we do, the race will be rescheduled, and I will run it, Lord willing and (as I said in the first post, but without this horrible lump in my throat) the creek don’t rise.
I have used the money readers kindly donated to register for the race, buy some training gear, and book a hotel room. I bought travel insurance for the hotel reservation, so that money should mostly be coming back to me. I will keep those funds separate and use them in the same way again whenever Hendersonville gets back on its feet. That travel insurance was a good six dollars spent. I highly recommend doing that.
With all the debris in the road, not to mention all the work to do, I haven’t trained much in the last week. But I promise to get back to that as soon as I can so I can turn out for the race, whenever it happens to be. So far, I’ve entered 4 races in my life, and 3 of them have been canceled. Twice for weather, and once for covid. I will run again, though, if the Lord wills it!
“Go now, ye that say, To day or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
–James 4:14-16
How are you guys making out? Any readers caught up in this mess? Since praying is the biggest way God has used me in all this, tell me: how can I pray for you and yours while I’m on my knees? Comments are open. Please use them!