When the Rain Comes and the Winds Blow
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” Matthew 7:24-25 ESV
“I am not the person I want to be. I want to be strong and resilient, able to rise above every circumstance to find a good way out, to power through difficulties, to soar above. It is cooler than I expected. The gray clouds again sit on the crests of the mountains, and no matter how I try, I can’t change my reality.
Which is what? No electricity. No water. Of course, no internet, no text, no phone service. Our weather information remains frozen on our screens since the last time we checked it Thursday evening before going to bed. We are marooned at a ski resort in the off-season with no snow. Two nights ago, the winds blew from the east with the approaching sound of a freight train; the rain blew sideways. During the black of the night, you didn’t hear the trees fall for the thundering sound of the wind in their leaves. It was almost as if they just quietly laid down. When daylight started to dawn, I began to see outside my window the steep mountain grade of the road only several feet away had become a rushing mud-colored river, pushing rocks the diameter of my head downhill. An hour later, it would overflow the landscape timbers and become a torrent of water cascading under the house to the left and the right, seeping into all the rooms on the bottom floor.
We had planned on returning home that Friday morning. My husband journeyed out to check on the roads when the skies cleared. “We aren’t going anywhere,” was his simple pronouncement. The rushing water had carved a 2’ wide, 4’ deep trench exposing newly laid cables, dissolving the ancient paved asphalt road into an impossible, impassable obstacle course.
Saturday morning, deciding the only way out was to leave our car behind, we loaded our one backpack and hiked two miles down toward town before being turned back by the local police. “Where are you going? There is no power, no water, and nothing is open ahead. If you have a roof over your head where you came from, consider yourself lucky. The reserves arrived today. Go back.”
Who would have expected a tropical storm to wipe out the mountains of western North Carolina?
So we hiked back up, avoiding the roads blocked by downed trees and mudslides and following instead the golf courses and ski runs soaked with hurricane rain, carefully testing bridges over swollen creeks. Oddly, downed apple trees full and overflowing with ripe fruit marked our path. We stowed as much as we could in our already-loaded backpacks and pockets. We had given all our remaining food to the Israeli family with four little ones when we thought we were making a break for freedom with high hopes of renting a U-Haul truck in town. Returning to where we have come from is reality, settling in with a heavy thud. My overwhelming desire was to get this six-year-old boy back to Atlanta in time for the surprise Braves game tonight his mother had planned weeks before. My heart aches for him. The mercy is that it appears she had not told him about it.
So now I sit on a balcony as the clouds descend on the mountains. The boy mentioned earlier plots obstacle course runs on the washed-out ski slope, where streams run, and small waterfalls continue to cascade. His aqua tee shirt and red shorts are easy to keep track of. A black stocking cap and wet hiking boots (much against his will!) are the only nods to the descending cold and fog.
Why should my situation weigh on my heart so mightily? Rest in your circumstances, right? I have learned to be content with little, the Apostle Paul writes. Lord, let it be so!
I have my Bible study and Bible in my lap: my best intentions. Yet, I can’t begin. I hold onto my discouragement and try to will myself into rising above my circumstances. I need to adjust my expectations; I need to manage my attitude.”
What you just read was written late Saturday afternoon, September 28th, less than 48 hours after Hurricane Helene had shaken our small place on this big ole earth. How quickly our hearts forget that our Lord walks with us. They are little things: light in the dark, warm water to wash with, clean water to drink, refrigeration, electric stoves, heat to warm the cool nights, drivable roads, communication and information from the outside world through our hand-held computers.
God allowed us to experience all these little losses. One thing after another removed, removed. It shakes you when you finally accept that help is not driving down your road; no one is coming to rescue you. The electricity is not going to be restored today, or tomorrow, or the next day. The only flowing water is running down the broken asphalt road outside your door. There is no way to tell your loved ones you are safe, but you won’t be coming home any time soon. Finally, accept the reality. Let the helplessness seep deep. And then stand and do the next thing.
As the sun set that Saturday evening, the Israeli family with their four children under the age of six knocked on our door, returning our cooler that had held our leftover milk and yogurt and cheese. Some granola and orange juice. They had eaten most of the dairy but gave us back twice what we had given them! Including apple sauce and raisins and half a bag of potato chips – a big hit for a young boy. A man from the next neighborhood over had shown up with a backhoe and filled in a ditch above us, leading to an access road under a ski lift no one had known about. It took the neighbors and the little family seven hours to push their car up the steep muddy hill and carefully drive down the hidden road in the misting rain, but they were now free!
My heart was filled with indescribable joy for them as they said their goodbyes and drove away into the dark. Captives released!
Sunday morning dawned. Jeff began our day with a prayer of gratitude over us. He had heard Barrett and me talking in bed after the sun had gone down; we couldn’t read, so I told him bible stories as we lay in the dark. Jesus providing, Jesus feeding the thousands, with Barrett chiming in about the little boy contributing his fish and loaves. Jeff, hearing our voices was filled with thanksgiving; we were safe and together, and the two of us were the people he would most want to be in a difficult situation with. From that moment on, we looked at everything we held in our hands as a gift; a wonderful, abundant gift.
We walked down to say goodbye to the couple five houses below us who had not been trapped by the dissolved road but by the downed trees and mudslides. My request for a roll of paper towels or an extra trash bag was answered with breakfast bars, peanut butter, homemade blackberry jelly, and half a loaf of bread! And oh, could we use some more dog food? Yes and yes! They headed out with my daughter’s phone number and the promise to call and tell her we were safe once they gained phone coverage.
Unknown to us, many people were praying without ceasing for us. Friends and family and neighbors. My son had shared in a family text: “It's wild to be so cut off from the world, physically and technologically! The last update sounds like they are doing okay, but I can't imagine not knowing how long this will last! But knowing my parents, they're making the most of it.” They had last heard from us Friday afternoon when we told my daughter and son-in-law we were going to hike out as the phone went dead.
Sunday, Jeff and Barrett walked up our broken road to check on the progress of our energetic neighbor from New Zealand, Kiwi Bill, and his best friend Juan, from Spain. (It was amusing how we all became known by our country of origin or descriptions! I decided Jeff and I must be “the old couple with the little boy.”) They were occupying themselves by throwing large rocks asphalt, and downed branches into the 4-foot wide trench that separated his truck from the access road above his house. A crazy and hopeless endeavor, really, but something to amuse the boy.
I pulled on our empty backpack, took the dog, and hiked down our mountain road, searching for water. We were down to three bottles – which would not even get us through the day. The local men and teen boys in their pickups had cleared the road of the downed trees (the sound of distant chainsaws had filled the air yesterday), and the worst mudslide was cleared. Officer Brown stopped when I waved him down, supplying six bottles of water and remembering Barrett, a packaged peanut butter sandwich, and three packs of Lance crackers. He promised to come up and check on us later in the afternoon.
Hiking back up by way of the golf courses and ski slopes (much more accessible than even the cleared switchback road), I waved hello to a helicopter circling twice overhead as an ambulance wailed in the valley below. I was starting to understand we were okay – those emergency vehicles were for people in much worse danger. We were inconvenienced. That was all.
The night before, just before sleep came, the little one beside me had finally voiced his pain. “Gigi, I am sad,” he confided. “I was going to a Braves game. And I am missing it.” (Shoot – he did know, after all!) And we were going to have a family party. And I’m sad because my sister is going to be with us and I haven't seen her in six weeks. And I'm sad because I'll miss football practice tomorrow." Aha. There was no way to fix these small hurts in his small - but big heart.
Just so you know, “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the Bible. We could not ‘fix’ our situation. It would take big equipment and strong manpower. In our little bubble, we didn’t even have any idea how horrible and heartbreaking the world around us was. We did not know the terror of flooding water in the night, falling trees, and swollen rivers that washed away houses and loved ones.
But God. The good ending to our story finds its foundation here: God hears us, and God speaks to us. We are not alone even though the rain comes and the winds blow.
Earlier that week, before the storm, Barrett had asked me one evening as we read his bible story, “Gigi, why do we pray to God? Does He even hear us? Have you ever heard Him talk to you?” I had reassured him that yes, I had heard His voice – because He often speaks to us through situations and especially through people.
And that is exactly what we experienced over and over again. I need to write down and remember the little miracles, the constant day-by-day provision of our daily bread and clean water… and even the bucket we found in the bushes that allowed us to catch the running water to flush the toilet!
Suffice it to say, by Monday morning, our car was safely on the other side of the deep trench, thanks to Kiwi Bill, Juan from Spain, and the neighbors below us who returned in time (due to a huge mudslide blocking the road an hour to the east of us) to help scavenge more wood and a metal storm grate to collectively guide our car inch by inch over the engineered bridge crossing the trenches. Officer Brown showed up just before our crossing to reassure us we were in good hands (he thought highly of Bill and Juan) and advised us that the roads to the east would be cleared by the following morning.
Oddly, Barrett had started collecting attraction brochures with maps on our drive up the previous Sunday. Since we had no GPS for the first two hours of our ten-hour zig-zag journey out, we pieced together those old-fashioned folding maps. God had provided for us before we knew of our need!
During the slow-motion drive through the areas of devastation around us, we slowly began to understand how firm the foundation was where we spent those flood-filled days. We just happened to be on high ground when the rains came. My heart began to ache as we saw the log jams of trees and houses in the rushing muddy waters of the swollen rivers in the valleys. I still cry out for the loss and hurt that came in the night for so many people. Their hands are empty with grief and loss. I remind myself I must continue to pray for them. I have felt only the tiniest hint of their hopelessness.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. This is my most beautiful remembrance of God’s reminder to us that He indeed hears us before we call and answers us in His amazing way. Broken apple trees; those storm-downed trees provided more apples than we could carry. Before driving away, we revisited one of the apple trees. Carefully avoiding the yellow jackets feasting on the sweet fruit, we gathered handfuls of the apples. We shared them with our son and daughter, who were waiting on our front porch for our arrival that Monday night, the door open, lights on. Jeff made an apple cobbler; I stewed them in oatmeal. And I gave them to my Jewish neighbors who were celebrating Rosh Hashana. Most unexpected of all was my neighbors’ sweet tears as I shared my story of God’s provision with them. The rains fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, but God had safely placed us on His solid rock. I am humbled. I am grateful.
Firm Foundation - Cody Carnes & Maverick City Music (cover) by Genavieve Linkowski w/ Mass Anthem
Christ is my firm foundation
The rock on which I stand
When everything around me is shaken
I've never been more glad
That I put my faith in Jesus
'Cause He's never let me down
He's faithful through generations
So why would He fail now?
He won't, He won't
I've still got joy in chaos
I've got peace that makes no sense
So I won't be going under
I'm not held by my own strength
'Cause I've built my life on Jesus
He's never let me down
He's faithful in every season
So why would He fail now?
He won't, He won't
He won't fail, He won't fail
Rain came and wind blew
But my house was built on You
I'm safe with You
I'm gonna make it through
Songwriters: Austin Davis / Chandler Moore / Cody Carnes
Firm Foundation lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing