Awash

The world around me is a perfect metaphor for life this week. You see, the sky really has been falling here in my neck of the woods, so much so that the rivers are over their banks in many places and lapping dangerously close in others. My basement is flooding right now. Thanks to a little pump, it's not doing any damage. The tiny motor and several yards of black hose seems to bail fast enough to keep the waters at bay. I am one of the lucky ones. I have a friend whose vehicle is nearly submerged. The floodwaters are inches from the deck of her house on stilts.

A friend and I took off in my truck the other day to take a peek at the area rivers. We settled on a dike that pokes out into one of largest area rivers. And we watched the muddy water swirl angrily past, churning up the trees and sticks and other pieces of the world it had devoured on its breakneck journey downstream. This wasn't a clear, rushing rapid. It was ugly and savage, beautiful and frightening. It made my heart quicken as I watched.

There are times, when life makes one feel like a tree on one of those eroding riverbanks, struggling to hang on and avoid being swept away in the savage waters. There are times when all of those normal demands and disappointments that come in life somehow swell. Alone, they are just runoff rushing down the mountains. Get them together and they become a beast that rips you from what roots you, beats you silly and deposits you, bewildered and bruised, on some sandbar 500 miles away. And even once the flood subsides, it can sometimes be nigh impossible to feel rooted again.

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