“We were all, to varying degrees, cracked and warped versions of our pre-flood selves, exhausted from the never-ending tasks of sifting and discovering, scraping and cleaning. Just like the homes and businesses, churches and schools, still standing on all sides of us, we were moving through life with water lines of our own, carrying visible scars of the damage we had sustained, thanks to those stubborn stains that refuse to fade.”
Mustard Seeds & Water Lines
There is something about days like these that still grips me a bit. Where the tempo of the rain pairs with the sight of sediment pouring down the hillside in sheets, and it brings me back to a time and place when water became a source of terror, rather than a gift. I hear the thunder banging in the distance, like a bass drum responding to a tremendous blow, and my bones tense as it echoes a reminder of a time when I suffered a similar blow myself.
These sensations aren’t as constant as they used to be and they are not nearly as intense, but they are there nonetheless. Offering a steady and seemingly unshakable reminder of a moment when the impossible became possible, and everything that the lines I had once drawn between life and death, shifted.
The images fade, the pain subsides, the flexibility returns to your heart and your hands, but still, you never quite forget being so leveled by loss. Which I guess is what I was getting at when I chose to name my book on this event, after water lines, the physical scars left on buildings after a flood. Because I knew that like those flooded buildings, I had been permanently marked as well.
I wrote,
“I sat on the couch, staring out the massive window at the water line on the roof of our workshop. Water lines were fitting, I supposed. I knew the building was more or less repaired, but the water line remained there like a scar, a permanent reminder of the damage the floodwaters had done, just like the raised line that marked where stiches once patched a wound back together.
The water goes down, the building gets gutted and repaired, and everything goes back to normal. Casual observers may not even be able to tell it had flooded, if it weren’t for that line. No, water lines insist on staying. They mark their victims, refusing to let them forget what happened to them once upon a time.”
And this has been true. Though my thoughts on this scarring have shifted.
One thing that you have to be willing to do when you choose to write your story, is to accept where you are at the end of the page. To stop trying to know more, to be further along, or to be better somehow. You have to get to a place where you understand the risk of exposing yourself unfinished, acknowledging that there is a lot that you still don’t know, and assuming that God-willing you will continue to dig and discover and grow beyond that place, and then still choose to speak as you are, from where you are, as best as you can, as of that particular day, anyways.
Because, after all, it’s your story that you are writing, not a textbook on grief.
What I’ve realized in time was that when I wrote this story down I was writing my way towards scars that I didn’t have yet. Each cut and tear was still so tender to the touch. Which I guess explains why I saw them as blemishes back then, rather than gifts. I think I wanted to see them differently, wanted to trust in their benefit, but I just hadn’t healed to that point yet. I didn’t understand that each mark and reminder, each grip in response to the weather, each blow of thunder, each drop of rain, each tear that comes so unexpectedly, they are all precious reminders that I encountered something of a living hell and by the Grace of God, made it to Life on the other side of it.
And in life and writing, and so many other things, the invitation isn’t that we aim to live an unblemished existence that is neat and free from marks of loss or pain. Or that we try to present ourselves as anything other than who we are and where we are. It’s that we learn to show up in a way that embodies the witness of Jesus to Thomas after the resurrection, where we come to stand before others as we are, and from where we are, and speak boldly about where we have been, because doing so exposes the marks that reveal the true boundary lines between the dead and the living. And when others see that it helps them to believe that they can do the same.
If you would like to read more about my story of the Great Flood of 2016, you can check it out here:
This paragraph speaks to me because it is so true:
“ One thing that you have to be willing to do when you choose to write your story, is to accept where you are at the end of the page. To stop trying to know more, to be further along, or to be better somehow. You have to get to a place where you understand the risk of exposing yourself unfinished, acknowledging that there is a lot that you still don’t know, and assuming that God-willing you will continue to dig and discover and grow beyond that place, and then still choose to speak as you are, from where you are, as best as you can, as of that particular day, anyways.”