The weeks that followed included bottled water, school delays, full responsibility for carpool, frantic searches for travel routes due to washed out roads, traffic jams, and asking The Lord how we could respond.
I found myself introspective and withdrawn in my house, safe and warm, and strangely guilty. I shut off the constant news reports which were making me anxious. I felt flooded with external stimulus and noise and my brain felt numb. I read a book upstairs for six hours during the rains while others in my city were escaping with their lives and children from rooftops. If I had a hole to hide my head in, I probably would have, baffled at my slow-motion reaction to stress.
In contrast, my "command man" was born for such a time as this and plunged into action for days helping his parents carry years of river-ruined possessions to the curb. The company was used as a site to receive cardboard boxes, and loading docks were utilized by the Red Cross.
Inside, at home, I had the girls bake pumpkin bread muffins for the Samaritan's Purse relief workers that poured into our church in response to the disaster. I bought diapers for the churchwide drive and cleaned out closets to donate sheets and clothes to the school drive. We sent in oatmeal when called for for emergency food packs. I arranged for the older kids to volunteer at their middle school sorting donations. I wrote checks and checked on people, and made calls to get someone help for a tarp on their roof, but it never seemed enough in the black hole of need and devastation around our city. I needed someone to tell me what to do. I needed to get my hands dirty and not just watch from afar.
Thankfully, organizations such as Samaritan's Purse and the Red Cross have organizing willing, yet unskilled volunteers down to a science. They are a well-oiled machine. They can direct people like me who care, but have no idea how to be of useful assistance. When I cry, "Here I am, send me", they can put unskilled labor to use.
