How do you bury the dead?

The unknown neighbor from somewhere upstream whose body was among the tangled flood debris left in what used to be your yard–what do you do when disaster cuts you off from the services that support daily life, severed from the comfort of an ordered community? Once the man who was my neighbor leaves his body, it quickly begins to rot. Without electricity, roads, and communication to connect us, we’re alone with stone, wood, water, and mud.

When we lose the intricate net of civilization that lifts us all out of a beastly existence, the work to survive becomes everything. The families of the flood-stricken communities are in desperate need of help. And I feel helpless.

In 2011, when Hurricane Irene dumped its rain on Vermont as a tropical storm, rivers swelled far beyond normal flood lines. The power of all that water racing down our steep mountainsides scoured river beds and dragged homes off their foundations. 34 bridges were closed and several covered bridges were damaged or destroyed. A father and son lost their lives when they went to check on Rutland’s town water system. Four lives in total were lost. All Vermonters were haunted by the damage.

That was nothing, nothing compared to what the South has suffered with Helene.

Last May I drove a rental car from Charlotte to Black Mountain NC for the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. I drove up the road along Flat Creek in Montreat to attend church. I vividly remember the modest houses on the flats before the road ascended, catching glimpses of someone mowing a lawn, one sitting on the porch drinking coffee, one weeding a pretty garden. The homes were made of wood, and struck me as ‘home built’ by enterprising young families, such as my own in Vermont. Distinctive. Having personality. Homes, not vacation rentals.

Surely, they washed away. Did the people who lived there survive?

The memory of that quiet community pierces my heart like a long thorn, making my heartbeats painful day and night. Is it too dramatic to say my soul is weeping?

“O God, You are my God. Earnestly I seek You. My soul thirsts for You; my body longs for You in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

Psalm 63 drips in irony when I apply it to this present grief, because it comes from a devastation of water, not a drought.

And yet, I keenly feel a spiritual drought. My soul weeps for a place to weep in the company of other weeping Christians. When I come to church, the very last thing I want is happy songs of praise and promise. I need to cry out the weight of this sorrow in hymns of suffering.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Refrain:
It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

I long to walk into a holy place, a sanctuary with a vaulted ceiling that makes me look up, a vast place that makes me feel small and God great, alone yet intimately known. Then I will be assured that God sees my southern neighbors and works to relieve the suffering that He, in His mysterious majesty, allowed.

Why are you in despair, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Hope in God, and wait expectantly for Him,
for I shall again praise Him
for the help of His presence. Psalm 42

I will praise in joyful songs again, but first I need to sing the sorrow.

Wherever you are, my fellow grieving children of God, I weep with you as surely as we will shout our praises one day before the Throne.