The Morning After

After getting the children off to school, my husband and I returned to Atlanta today. Thankfully the waters had crested overnight and had receded a great deal by the time we were ready to get back to work.
My father in law is walking down the same driveway that was chest high (4+ feet) 11 hours earlier. Note the waterline on the bricks in the photo below. It was that same height inside last night.


I do not have very good pictures, because we were busy and I did not pack my Nikon. I snapped a few on my pocket camera in an attempt to show how this furniture had floated all over the house. There were socks in the living room and soup labels in the foyer. Everything upholstered was soaked through, except for the drapes that my father-in-law had dutifully tied up with bungee cords. (See below)

Smaller area rugs were found in random locations throughout the house. And despite our valiant attempts at rescuing memories, there were dozens of soggy photographs littering every room. We even found a stash of very old family scrapbooks from my husband's grandparents. Regretfully, they had been underwater all night.
One of the more revealing scenes was on the back patio where firewood which had once been neatly lining one wall was strewn about. The water out back had been over these tables and deposited the logs on top as it receded.

Pictures cannot convey the smell...ugh, the smell. The sludge and silt throughout was also overwhelming. All of their HVAC vents were covered, as were the majority of the downstairs electrical outlets. All of their appliances had been submerged overnight. There are hundreds of families in Atlanta suffering similar fates or worse.

Last night it was an eery, shock-filled drama...strangely slow motion and wrapped in the darkness of power outage and 3 feet of murky river water. This morning sunshine shed light on the fact that although the flood was over the hard work was just beginning. Today was spent packing and removing anything left of value that was not destroyed. The wait for insurance adjusters, contractors, cleaning crews, etc. has now begun.

My inlaws are, thankfully, surrounded by loving friends and fabulous neighbors...many of whom are dealing with their own devastation. They are staying with friends until they can get into something more semi-permanent. Little R has decided they should just move to our town. It would at least give some use to our former home which has been on the market for 30 months! And as R says,"It would be gweat. We wouldn't even have to travel far to see them!"

There's no neat bow to tie this post up in. Life happens. Storms come. When they woke up Monday morning they had no clue what a dramatic chapter in their life was about to begin, but it did. As Kelly stated in the last post's comments, "Rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous in our fallen world."

I am reminded of a Charles Stanley sermon I heard on the radio long ago. His chosen passage was from Matthew 7:24-27 (NLT, emphasis mine)

"Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

Although I was familiar with this passage, it was the first time I had heard the emphasis placed on the fact that the rains and storms WOULD come. They are virtually guaranteed in this life. I am so tempted to try to live a 'safe' life, watching the weather closely, avoiding the prospect of storms...but that will not be a lasting strategy. The storms WILL come, maybe not always literally, but equally devastating in the form of betrayals, illness, disappointment, loss.

There is invariably shock in the midst of it, followed by the messy, inconvenient clean up process in the aftermath. We will not be protected by the view, the furnishings, the insurance policy or even our good deeds. Jesus' emphasis was on our foundation.