MUSINGS FROM THE MIND OF AMANDA

I’m watching the news reports from the Guadalupe River floods. I’ve been to the river. I’ve tubed the Comal. I’ve camped on the Guadalupe with my church youth group. We even tubed the Comal because the Guadalupe was flooding, we were told. And I walked away, safe, healthy and dry.

I’ve sent my son to camp up around Austin. He swam, but didn’t enjoy it. He came home safely.

My heart hurts for the parents who sent their girls to a safe, happy church camp, and didn’t get to hear the stories about what they did, or their new friends, or the Bible stories. I can’t imagine sending your kid some place safe and losing them.

My heart weeps for the first responders. These are people who are putting their lives on hold to go to a horrible, dangerous place and will either see a miracle, or see the worst a parent can see. My husband and son are first responders, but thankfully they haven’t been dispatched out to central Texas.

We see miracles. A woman was swept FIFTEEN miles and was able to climb a tree and wait for rescue.

We see tragedies. A young man broke a window to get his family out, and took them as far as he could before he bled out from a severed artery from breaking the window. A camp director who’d survived brain cancer was killed trying to get to a cabin to rescue girls. And a pair of sisters were found, holding on to each other, even in death.

I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know if the weather forecast was wrong, or if there was no warning. I don’t know if anything could’ve prevented it, other than just not building anywhere near the river. But I do know that in all this, God was still there. There were 850 people at Camp Mystic, plus everyone else camping. So many of them are safe.

But my heart still hurts