In the Flood

"Are you still in the flooded house waiting for looters?" I texted my brother John.
"I'm standing here at the ready," he texted back.
"Have you seen any looters?" I asked.
"Nope, now I am looting. Got my eyes on some sweet Stakmore chairs."
"Mom and Dad are wondering if Jenny and Anthony and Callie will be coming to live with them, while you loot. They haven't been able to get a hold of you."
Silence.
A few minutes later, my phone beeped as his text came in.
"Snagged the Stakmore chairs! Google them- really nice! I love floods."
I did pause to google the Stakmore chairs. They are made in Owego, my brother's flooded town. I don't know if the factory flooded or not. They are folding chairs but look like fancy sturdy chairs.
"Nice," I texted, "Especially the Queen Anne ones."
"Snagged one Queen Anne," he texted.
"Are you stealing from your neighbors?"
"No, they put them out with the garbage. Idiots."
"Well if they are wood, they might be ruined by the flood. Maybe they are warped."
"No, they are in perfect condition. $$$$$"
"See any queen futons?"
"Yeh, I can get you one of those..."
"So back to the folks....will you all be living with them? Where is your family?"
"Jenny and Anthony will be going there from our friend's house tomorrow. Me and Callie (the dog) will be looting."
He sent  a photo to my phone then. It was titled: "Defending against looters."
"What's this, John?" I asked, "It looks like a fire."
"It is the fire pit on my back deck. I am defending against looters."
"Ah, and do you also have a 6 pack of beer to help you defending against looters?"
"Yes! How did you guess?"
"John...I am not sure you are taking this flood with the proper degree of seriousness..."

But really, I am glad to see his sense of humor wasn't flooded out of him too. As long as he can keep laughing, he will be fine. Meanwhile, as John was defending against looters (and/or looting himself), I took Honeybun and Asherel and off we marched to my very first book signing. We arrived a half hour early, and within a few minutes, a customer walked in. She was an animal lover and as we chatted, she picked up my book.

"I have to read this then!" she said, and had me sign my first copy.

Over the next three hours, a steady stream of people came by. Many wonderful friends showed up, but I also signed books for many strangers. All the children raced over to Honeybun and I showed them how to ask her to shake hands with them. I had them put a treat in their closed fist, and then tell her shake. The once starving dog would then paw at the fist.
"That's as close as it gets," I warned the kids who felt that was not much like a real hand shake.
This was a skill newly developed just for the book signing and she was not consistent. However,  by the end of the book signing, Honeybun was eagerly shaking with every one who walked in the store.

One lady told me about their dog, who was always off visiting other homes, escaping every fence they tried to keep her in. And then, she escaped and was gone for a year. They had given up hope of ever seeing her again, and a year later, she was back. She acted as though she had never left.

Another lady had me sign two books, one for each grandson.
"Do they have dogs?" I asked.
"No, but they want one. Their mom won't let them have one. Hey...how about if you sign to their mom too? Maybe it will convince her..."
"I hope so," I said, laughing.

"This is riveting," said one friend, flipping through my first chapter. I glanced up.
"I have never read a book," he said.
"He doesn't read," said his wife. We all looked at them.
"Well, I mean, he does read...he knows how to read..., " she explained, "He just never sits and reads a whole book."
"But you'll read this one, right Denny?" I asked.

"I heard Brandon ran a race!" I said to another friend. I hadn't seen Brandon in years, since he was just a little tyke diagnosed with autism.
"Yes," said my sweet friend, who had shadowed Brandon for years so he could successfully attend Sunday school, "And he did really well. He was invited to an invitational race, in fact, in South Carolina, he did so well. A coach runs alongside him. It is the first sport he has ever tried, and he is good."

And as they all filtered in and out, first a flood of them, and then a trickle, I thought of how many walking books there are in this world, how many wonderful stories, how many magnificent people. I was too busy trying to sign perfect and unique little snippets on each book to really talk to the friends that came in. I felt bad about that, but I am pretty sure they understood. I never had more than 2 or 3 waiting in a line at a time. It wasn't like the one book signing I went to, when President Jimmy Carter was signing in Charlotte. I didn't like Jimmy Carter, but knew my mom did, so I waited in line an hour to get a signed copy of his book for her. My book signing wasn't like that. But all Jimmy Carter did was scratch a near indecipherable signature when I handed him the book. He didn't even look up at me. I never want to sign books that way.

After the remarkable, momentous day, we settled down to dinner, and Comer, my old senior friend from the nursing home called.
"Vicky!" he said, "How did the book signing go?"
I was shocked he remembered it, or even knew about it. I hadn't seen him in two weeks, as he had forgotten our scheduled meeting last week and gone off on a field trip with the other residents.
"I wanted to be there," he said, "Ken came for me and I was going out the door, and I don't know what came over me. Felt like passing out. They had to help me back to bed."
His speech sounded slurred.
"OH my," I said, "Are you feeling better now?"
"Yes, I just needed to rest," he said, "But I was mighty sorry to miss your book signing."
"Well it is so kind of you to even have thought of it," I said, "Thankyou. You rest up, and I will see you for lunch Thursday."
"I won't forget," he said.

Floods are on my mind, but I did indeed feel a flood of love encircling my world yesterday. The sweet daughter who helped me with Honeybun for three rather dull hours for her, the husband who came out near the end of the day to cheer me on, the friends who gave up a portion of their family day to show me encouragement and support, the brother who found laughter (and nice chairs!) in the midst of disaster, the old friend who sounded as though he may have had a small stroke and but for that would have walked with the labored cane tapping steps of a 93 year old man to come to this day that meant so much to me, the sisters and cousins, friends, and son who all asked eagerly how it was going, and how had it gone.

"What do you want me to write to you?" I asked one friend.
"I thought you would have that all planned out," she laughed.
"I want to write something special to everyone," I said, "Just the right thing."

But I just didn't have words to say what it all meant to me. What my family, my dog, my God, my friends, my world all mean to me. Floods are everywhere, and in my case, it really is a flood of joy.

Psalm 69: 1-6, 14-17, 30-36

 ¹ Save me, O God,
   for the waters have come up to my neck.
² I sink in the miry depths,
   where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
   the floods engulf me.
³ I am worn out calling for help;
   my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
   looking for my God.
⁴ Those who hate me without reason
   outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
   those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
   what I did not steal.
 ⁵ You, God, know my folly;
   my guilt is not hidden from you.
 ⁶ Lord, the LORD Almighty,
   may those who hope in you
   not be disgraced because of me;
God of Israel,
   may those who seek you
   not be put to shame because of me.


 ¹³ But I pray to you, LORD,
   in the time of your favor;
in your great love, O God,
   answer me with your sure salvation.
¹⁴ Rescue me from the mire,
   do not let me sink;
deliver me from those who hate me,
   from the deep waters.
¹⁵ Do not let the floodwaters engulf me
   or the depths swallow me up
   or the pit close its mouth over me.
 ¹⁶ Answer me, LORD, out of the goodness of your love;
   in your great mercy turn to me.
¹⁷ Do not hide your face from your servant;
   answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.

 ³⁰ I will praise God’s name in song
   and glorify him with thanksgiving.
³¹ This will please the LORD more than an ox,
   more than a bull with its horns and hooves.
³² The poor will see and be glad—
   you who seek God, may your hearts live!
³³ The LORD hears the needy
   and does not despise his captive people.
 ³⁴ Let heaven and earth praise him,
   the seas and all that move in them,
³⁵ for God will save Zion
   and rebuild the cities of Judah.
Then people will settle there and possess it;
 ³⁶ the children of his servants will inherit it,
   and those who love his name will dwell there.

A Patch of Dry Ground

My brother spent the night in his flooded town in his flooded home with a shotgun, watching for looters that dared enter his home. There is no water, electricity, food service, or any service of any kind open in the devastated Owego/Binghamton NY flood zone. Into this vacuum, the looters came. The National Guard increased its patrol, but my brother must not have felt it was sufficient. He couldn't stop the flood, but he is determined to stop the looters.

I can't imagine what his night must have been like, but I am waiting anxiously to hear from him today. It distresses me greatly that anyone would take advantage of others' troubles as to loot the remnants of horrendous loss. Ninety percent of the Owego businesses were flooded extensively. I can't imagine how this town is going to rebuild.

My brother sent a newspaper photograph of an aerial view of flooded Owego. No streets are visible. It looks like Holland with canals of water crisscrossing the town, with trees growing out of the water. There is one patch, one small patch of dry grass in the whole city. The flood waters rose around all but that patch of grass. Half my brother's house sits on that small patch of dry ground. His house is the most fortunate house in all of Owego.

While the waters were rising, the river not yet crested, and John's wife, Jenny, and son Anthony, were trapped in the house, John had texted me.
"Now might be a good time to get on the God hotline," he said.
"I'm on it," I texted back.
I prayed and prayed, throughout the day, texting back and forth with my brother as the river rose. I prayed for the safety of John's family, and for his beautiful two hundred year old home.
Finally I got the text that the river had crested. And that Jenny and Anthony had been rescued.
However, I felt like John might think God had let him down. The house had still flooded, at least part way up the first floor level. But his family was safe. I praised God for His deliverance. Not a single person died in the overwhelming flood.

But as I gazed at the startling photograph of Owego underwater, with that single patch of grass beside my brother's house, I thought of the rest of the story I had learned later. Jenny had been able to walk across that single patch of dry ground between the waters, to the public phone in the business on the other side of the grass, and call the authorities. Every road was flooded. Owego was trapped in the water. The National Guard was alerted, and John's family was rescued by boat. I couldn't stop looking at that patch of grass, and thinking if that isn't an answer to prayer, I don't know what is.

"But what about the other people?" asked Asherel, when I told her the story.
Yes, I had thought of the other people. They weren't given a patch of grass. But everyone in Owego is safe, and there is much to be thankful for in that alone.
"I should have prayed more fervently for the whole city," I said, "I was so focused on praying for John's family..."
It is not that I think my prayers direct God, nor that they even influence God. But we are told to pray "without ceasing", and I do believe that obedience in prayer brings blessing. It may not bring the answers we long for, but there is always blessing in prayer. And if everyone would bow their head in prayer, they would have no time to loot, or blow up buildings...

This anniversary of 9/11, I have my first book signing. It was the Park Road Bookstore's available date, and thus assigned to me. But my book is one of hope, of redemption, of saving what seemed impossibly lost. Perhaps it is a good day for my book signing, after all.

When there is a flood of trouble around you, and today certainly is the memory of that, I think sometimes the only way to wade through the grief is to look for that one patch of dry ground. The waters do eventually recede, and flood plains have the richest soil of all to start anew, when we find the strength and courage to replant.

Nehemiah 9:10-12

¹¹ You divided the sea before them, so that they passed through it on dry ground, but you hurled their pursuers into the depths, like a stone into mighty waters. ¹² By day you led them with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the way they were to take.

Warnings

My brother has had better days. It seems that while he was stuck in Atlanta, the mighty Susquehanna reached record flood levels and in the middle of the night, surrounded his beautiful historic home in Owego,NY, trapping his wife and son inside. It filled the basement as John tried to book a flight into Binghamton. All flights were cancelled as my hometown went into a state of emergency, and the waters rose to the first floor of my brother's home. My parents were safe, high atop a hill, but the city of Binghamton, and Owego proper, on the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers, were inundated with flood waters. Even if my sister in law Jenny could get out of the house, all the streets out of Owego were flooded.

Midday, the National Guard arrived in a Zodiac boat, and rescued Jenny, Anthony, and their sweet dog Callie. My folks will have their son living with them again, it looks like, for a few months. When the waters recede, poor John will have to make massive repairs on his beautiful home. He will fly into Binghamton this morning. As of now, Jenny is with friends in a neighborhood near Owego, but swollen creeks cut off her path to get to my folks. The airport is on the same high ground as my old home, so John will wait with my parents for the raging waters to recede from epic, record breaking flood level, and will retrieve his family. They hope to reunite by Saturday.

"Why didn't she leave when she had a chance?" I asked John.
"Because no one thought the river would flood that high," he told me.
That's what Noah's neighbors said too....

Warnings. They are all over the place, and we ignore them at our peril. I am not faulting Jenny. In the two hundred years that beautiful historic house had been standing, it had never flooded more than a few inches in the basement. She had no reason to suspect the river would engulf her home. But it did start me musing about all the warnings in life that we ignore. They are sometimes little things, like sassy tones that creep into our children's voices. Sometimes they are little indulgences that are slowly not little anymore. The occasional cream jelly donut becomes the staple, and broccoli becomes the occasional treat. We go for a run rather than tackle that work we should be tackling...just this once...and that just this once becomes commonplace. Rather than fill our lungs with healthy fresh air, and move the muscles God gave us, we slouch like slugs on the couch, because today we are too tired. We don't notice that today becomes tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and soon the muscles are as gooey as that jelly donut we are now eating in prodigious amounts. We ignore God's nudges to look up at Him, and open our hearts to His pleas, and when His image becomes fainter, we blame it on Him. Sarcasm and anger replace encouragement and gentleness. The rain begins to fall, and falls and falls for forty days and forty nights. We keep thinking it will stop, but one day it doesn't, and it floods the world. And as we grasp at the planks of our homes floating by, we wonder why we weren't warned.

Jeremiah 6:9-11

 ⁹ This is what the LORD Almighty says:
   “Let them glean the remnant of Israel
   as thoroughly as a vine;
pass your hand over the branches again,
   like one gathering grapes.”
 ¹⁰ To whom can I speak and give warning?
   Who will listen to me?
Their ears are closed
   so they cannot hear.
The word of the LORD is offensive to them;
   they find no pleasure in it.
¹¹ But I am full of the wrath of the LORD,
   and I cannot hold it in.
   “Pour it out on the children in the street
   and on the young men gathered together;
both husband and wife will be caught in it,
   and the old, those weighed down with years.

Matthew 23:37

   ³⁷ “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.