Swept Away by the Flood
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Hi friends,
I am glad to say I am back. I have missed writing these posts, organizing my thoughts as best as I can into something readable. I find notes written to myself all over the place – on sheets of hotel and funeral-home notepads, on brightly colored sticky notes, on the backs of envelopes and church bulletins, stuck into whatever I have been reading, left in piles on my what-is-supposed-to-be a desk if I can ever get it cleared off, on the kitchen table. My mind has occasionally felt as cluttered as an old-fashioned bulletin board crammed with fraying memories and to-dos, one layered on top of the other, falling off haphazardly. Keeping me awake at night.
This past year has been a rolling wave of grief, responsibilities, thousands of miles of travel and logistics, questions, loss, and insights. But – and it’s a big but – that rolling wave has also been flecked with light. Sometimes dim, its brightness fading in and out, but steady, if I squeeze my eyes and focus.
Time and again, I have found myself thinking, “Let go of the heavy load you are carrying before it sinks you, Andrea. Your power and control are so illusory. Lighten the boat. Look, see, notice those pinpoints of light. They speak of hope, promise, healing. Joy. Don’t lose sight of them.”
Those flickers of light have sustained me. They have also pushed me to look at myself. You become aware, when you are straining to keep your eyes focused on the tiniest of bright spots, that the darkness is not just outside of yourself. It is also within. You doubt yourself, who you are, who you will be, who God is, what He is up to.
So here we are. Here I am. Keeping my eyes fixed on the brightness of God’s love as honestly as I can.
Last month, my husband and I drove several hours to a family gathering to attend and celebrate the baptism of our three-year old granddaughter. We kept a close eye on the weather as we packed, for what remained of Hurricane Debbie was dumping inches of rain all up and down the Eastern Seaboard and wreaking havoc in the interior regions. We left at noon on a Friday. I drove the first 3 – 4 hours while my husband caught up on a few work emails and figured out where we should stop for our next EV charge.
We were traveling from rural New York state to south of Washington, DC. The rain was occasionally hard, but never so bad I needed to pull over on the side of the road. After a few hours the downpour began to let up. I relaxed my grip on the steering wheel and began noticing what can only be called sheets of water pouring off the hills surrounding us as we crossed the state line into Pennsylvania. Not sweet waterfalls cascading merrily down the high slopes that were on my right as I drove, but sheets of water. Everywhere.
The interstate we were traveling was high up, four lanes wide with a grass medium running down the middle. It’s a beautiful stretch my husband and I always comment on, no matter the season, as we look down upon farms and pastures and barns and wild-seeded apple trees, old split-rail fences, livestock, cornfields, and miles of woods. Though the highway is a commercial lifeline for a remote part of the country, we have never come close to seeing what one would call heavy traffic on its curves and rises and falls.
Not until that Friday, when Google Maps warned me of what was supposed to be one 20-minute delay, but was longer, and happened more than once. Slowing down, looking across the median and opposing two lanes of traffic and down into what was a deep ravine, I was shocked to see that the sheets of water cascading on our side of the highway had turned a small creek on the other side into a roaring river gone wild. The water was muddy, threatening, unstoppable. Nothing could stand in its way.
We were once stopped for several minutes, when a ditch on our side could not divert quickly enough all the water shunting off the hills into a culvert running underneath the road. The water had nowhere to go but across the top of the tarmac. We awaited our turn and drove through the water slowly, peering down at the roaring tumult far below us. Further on, after we had descended to lower terrain and the “creek” had shifted to our side of the road, we watched a tree that was in the path of the flooding water be uprooted and swept away in a matter of seconds. We were in no danger, but it was sobering.
I grew up in hurricane country and have seen my share of high winds and torrential rain, but I had never seen anything quite like this, except for one time when I infuriated my father because I carelessly wanted to see “how bad it looked” where the boats that carry pilots to/from ships were docked during an incredibly powerful northeaster. My father let me have it, and rightly so, when I made a move that jeopardized both his safety and mine. But that is another story for another time.
My experience notwithstanding, it was days before I could get the image of all that rushing, merciless, muddy water – swollen so high above its banks – out of my mind. I thought of God’s justice as we slowly crept behind a long line of traffic, how the Bible says it will one day roll down like thunder. I am seeing living thunder, I thought. It is alive, moving, all around me. It will change everything. Justice as a turbulent, living movement capable of sweeping up everything in its path was not an entirely comfortable thought for me then, and it isn’t now. I don’t think it should be.
About a week later, I started thinking how that roaring water is also a vivid depiction of God’s love. But I was troubled by mental images of all the debris and destruction left in the water’s path, until it finally dawned on me that I am the one who needs washing over. I am the one who needs to be drenched with torrents of God’s love til I am gasping for breath. I am the one who needs to be changed, freed by Someone whose love and forgiveness and tenderness can literally displace and remove the heavy boulders that crowd my heart.
I needed this reminder of God’s unstoppable love pouring over my life – a love capable of tearing away all sorrow and confusion, the pain that is peculiarly mine (and the pain that is peculiarly yours), difficult memories, fears of not being “enough.” I need God’s love to pour down over old resentments that should have died long ago, pour down over useless comparisons, pour down over my frustration at what I cannot control. Pour down over my jealousy, pettiness, self-righteousness, my need to prove something to someone. All that muddiness, that dirt and debris washing down hills and through choked culverts and over highway interstates: That is me. That is my life and what I need to be freed from. It’s embarrassing to say so, but in my darker moments it is true. And I don’t think I am alone.
The sheer power of so much rain depicted perfectly for me that I am not strong enough to withstand the truth of the love of God, especially when He is intent on showing me the overwhelming strength of His love. It would upend my life if I truly believed I am loved beyond all measure, not because of what I do – or don’t do – but because of who He is. It would change me, in good times and in bad. It would change the way I view and interact with others, especially those I mentally cast aside. It would change the way I think about myself.
Like the subsiding water, my thoughts about the flooding we witnessed have settled, replaced by a growing inner calm, at least for now. It has been freeing to remember I am not responsible for creating the change I long to see in my own life or in the lives of others. It is God’s work to strip away all that weighs us down; we cannot create, manufacture, manipulate or cajole it for ourselves. All we can do is keep our eyes focused on the light – sometimes dim, sometimes bright – those dancing pinpoints that penetrate the flood waters of His love as it pours over us.