Every single street, every single house, was lined with rubble. But instead of the familiar peace and quiet, I was confronted with devastation. So after my delivery, I slowly drove the familiar route to my parent’s house, a route I have driven a thousand times lined with quiet houses graced with big, front lawns and overarching green trees. Their house backed up to Terry Hershey Park and Buffalo Bayou, so during the storm, we heard that their street flooded, but we did not know the extent of the damage. Mom and Dad moved about five years ago, but for almost thirty years,they lived in a beautiful and restful neighborhood called Memorial Glen. Yesterday I delivered some clothes to a family whose home flooded and realized I was very close to the neighborhood where I grew up. Not in our hometown, our churches, our schools, and our neighborhoods. National or international disasters always happened out there, but not here. And we are grieving and frustrated with our own weakness and the limitations of our own strength and ability to be strong and sufficient in normal, day-to-day tasks, as well as in the aftermath of a storm.Īnd maybe, perhaps, we are grieving the loss of God as we have always known Him to be, at least in regards to our city and hometown – stable, reliable, protective, shielding us from disaster, the winds, and the storm. Seeing the realities of friends’ homes that are utterly destroyed, all of the possessions they hold dear in this life piled high on the curb, water logged, mildewed, and molded has taken its toll on our bodies and souls.Īs a city, I think we are grieving the loss of “normal.” We are grieving the loss of land and homes and streets and people the way we have always known them to be. And confronting all the realities of the “abnormal” has left us frayed around the edges and feeling heavy and pressed down. Just like the sheet rock and flooring so many of us have had a hand in ripping out this week, “normal” has been ripped out of our city, our day-to-day lives and routines, our priorities, and our to-do lists and left to sit out on the curb, waiting for dump trucks to come carry it away. Navigating in our city is like navigating a war zone, and every attempt to get out on the road is one more reminder that “normal” does not exist anymore, at least for a very long time. Hearing the continual drone of choppers flying overhead and wailing sirens of emergency vehicles, while seeing the trash piles and flood debris that lines almost every street, has left tension in my neck and all through my shoulders. Roads were jammed with traffic, and trying to navigate around town to get to friends who needed help, houses that had flooded, or even trying to do normal things like dropping my daughter off at preschool or going to get tap shoes for a ballet class took hours. I don’t know about those of you who live in Houston, but for me, this last week after the hurricane was harder, in many ways, than the week of the hurricane itself.
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