Deep Water in Texas

Audio By Carbonatix

Around the country, but especially here in Texas, our hearts and heads have been preoccupied with heartbreak and grief for the lives lost in the Kerr County Flood.

Everyone everywhere can relate on some level. As church staffers, we are campers, we are counselors…we place a premium value on these unique summer windows to get kids away, unplugged from culture, and immersed in Christ.

My family was at an Oklahoma camp in June. A very similar riverbed area, and there was a night I was awake in Texas watching OK weather into the wee hours. The kids didn’t even have phones, but Andy who did, had zero service the whole week anyway. They were only aware of rain. I was the one aware of the warnings and watches but too far away to do anything about it.

My nephew’s football coach at Trinity University in San Antonio is missing his little girl, Kellyanne. My dear friend is the pastor at FBC Kerrville, and their whole family has been thrust into the reality of a community that is suffering, a church that is suffering. Joey preached yesterday to people in pews who have been devastated and to people in pews who are still missing their people. I need to go find his message, I’m sure it was exactly what was needed.

My last Hey Salty Lady event was at FBC Kerrville and I have tried feebly to remember faces and names of the sweet women who were there, as I pray. It was my first time in Kerrville, and I didn’t know how beautiful it was until then, how lovely the people were.

One of my all-time favorite things to do in Texas is floating the Guadalupe. I have found that water and nature are among the few things that quiet my restless and racing mind. So beautiful, so careless…just cradled and carried by the water from Point A to Point B. It doesn’t require my effort or intention, only a decision to get in and let go.

In Texas, the Hill Country is our heaven, the river our rest.

And yet it too, is a counterfeit that can’t be fully trusted. It roars and rages if you turn your back on it. Life and loves carried away, indeed.

These are the things you have time to ponder and reflect on when your house is still standing and your family is safe. We are hundreds of miles away on land and even more degrees away in our minds from the reality, the many who are grieving and suffering.

And yet our hearts break. All of our hearts are breaking as we think about babies who must have been so scared in the dark, as the water came. Our hearts break as we think about the parents who woke up to a nightmare, a reality of lives lost and the possibility that even the hope of returned remains, may not remain.

I know Salty Citizen posts are supposed to be politic-centric, as is everything in a nation where half the population desires government to be God.

But tragedies and catastrophes serve much grander and clarifying purposes.

Tragedy quickly reveals the heroes and villains of the world. Heroes who risk and rescue. Villains who plot and point, like the pediatrician (now fired from her post) who wished well but only to those whose parents were Democrats. Villains like those whose only worldview is Trump, he is the lens through which all is seen…the reason for every wrong.

Can I just say that as a Conservative who has NEVER identified as MAGA but is rooting heartily for the success of Trump’s policies, I know zero people in Red Texas who place party loyalty over the pursuit of justice or common sense.  So before claiming Trump caused the rain and his budget cuts caused the flood, can we all acknowledge that not every dollar spent by our US government was spent wisely? It’s a thing. You can say it. We all know it.

There has been waste to the point of criminality. And there will be cuts to correct it. In transportation. In aid. In health. Yes, even in weather studies and science.

If the NWS was poorly funded, staffed or poorly performing in this storm, I would want to know it and I would want it fixed. And I would still be a conservative. Not because of loyalty, but because of common sense. That is my prevailing priority. I absolutely support law enforcement, but can still acknowledge that the school shooting in Uvalde was a gross dereliction of duty that should carry shame for generations. I am not conflicted at all in this.

We should have the maturity to seek what is best for our nation and not shy from evaluation and examination on how to improve it.

But we should also have the maturity not to blame everything on a single man who offends the left by mere existence. Give me a break.

There is not going to be a lot of silver linings around this flood and we are not tasked with finding or manufacturing them to understand why it happened. Sometimes things are just hard. Let them be. Sometimes there is loss that is unfair and unimaginable, without reason or relief. Let it be. This is why we have the grace of God, to endure such hard things.

But I will say how welcomed it is to see our nation finally acknowledge after it has denied it for so long…children are different than adults.

How helpful that the left who has tried to give full wisdom and autonomy to children for the last 10 years, can at last admit children are vulnerable and need to be protected by adults. Children are to be treasured and cared for and NOT subjected to the whims of our social or sexual experiments. What villain could look on Camp Mystic and still try to assign the wisdom or agency of an adult to a precious child? Surely now we can see and say that children are blessings to be preserved? We are heartbroken differently because babies were lost. We feel it differently because we innately understand the responsibility we have to defend and save, and we couldn’t.

All things we had forgotten and pretended not to know.

Tragedies are clarifying indeed.

Politics will not save. Government cannot save.

Friends, we need to have a correct theology of life and death, of Heaven. And Hell. And hope. We need to have a correct theology of our flesh and our spirit…of today, tomorrow, and eternity. And we need to them have well-rehearsed and well in place before disaster falls.

No one says “It is well with my soul” in the storm if they weren’t already singing it on the shore.