One year ago...

One year ago, August 26th, was a Saturday. Hurricane Harvey had already made landfall to the south and west of us in Houston. There were predictions of the potential of a whole lot of rain, but by mid day, it had rained just a bit. I went to our neighborhood Kroger to run errands and heard people commenting about how this hurricane was a dud. How I wish that would have been true.

As a church musician, sleep on Saturday night is essential. As the afternoon wore on and evening started, there were heavy bands of rains moving toward our area. In our staff text thread, the plan was to have worship as normal. The church isn’t far from Cypress Creek in Houston, and we don’t live too far from that. In fact, my drive to get to the church runs parallel to the creek for most of the drive. It started raining that night. Heavily. And kept raining. And kept raining. And kept raining. I got concerned, because our street in front our house regularly floods when there is just a bit of heavy rain. And the street the church is on has bar ditches along the street that regularly fill with water with minimal rain.

As Sunday morning came, the realization was that people weren’t going to be able to safely get out. So worship was cancelled. As Sunday wore out, it kept raining. Thankfully, we didn’t flood, but watching TV, keeping up with all of the updates on Twitter and Facebook, it was bad. The street I drive on to get to church was impassable by car. The Interstates were filled with water. I had experienced this on a smaller scale the year prior, because on April 15th, the “tax day flood” happened. We had heavy rains which led to heavy flooding and schools were shut down for the entire week. This was the “tax day flood”, but on a much grander scale. We finally lost power on Tuesday, because there was so much infrastructure issues and there were many without power. Thankfully, because the storm had passed, it was cooler and less humid. We made it 24 hours without power before we borrowed a propane powered generator from a friend.

Finally on Wednesday afternoon, I was able to get out. We as a staff met at church to figure out what we needed to do. We contacted members and found that about 25 families had major flooding, as well as families connected to our childcare. Getting out broke my heart. I couldn’t go my “normal” way, so I had to go another way to cross over the creek. I could, but the water was so high, still under the bridge, but so many houses were saturated with water. I cried the entire drive. We also have a time of worship Thursday night, and basically opened the church and our gym for families on that Friday. All of it was powerful, cathartic and needed. “How are you doing” became the question we all asked each other.

When I was able to drive on my normal route, the piles of debris were unbelievable. Brick walls were knocked down. A Catholic Church that was nearby suffered horrible damaged and had to worship in an outdoor location until mid May. But what I saw out of that devastation and destruction was people pitching in, helping out, and a city coming together.

So what does all of this have to do with minimalism? Everything. While yes, minimalism has to do with “stuff” and our relationship with it, it’s a choice that we have to make with our things. Harvey changed that for many people in my area. It didn’t matter if you had a million dollar house or you lived in an apartment. Because of 51 inches of rain, if the water comes in to your residence, what you valued, treasured, loved, owned.....is now junk. So many piles of debris were out in front of people’s houses for so long. To me, that was the biggest lesson I learned in relation to things from Harvey.

Having things is essential to living. A roof over your head keeps you dry and comfortable. What you choose to put under that roof is something that is replaceable, but hopefully, it’s your choice when and how to replace it. Seeing all of this first hand breaks my heart because these people lost their choice to make in regard to their things. A year later, much looks “normal” in the city of Houston. We’re all changed by it, no doubt. And I think that people have been changed in many different ways. For me, it’s how I value things and how much more willing I am to pass things on to others if their need is far greater than mine.

For a visual of then and now, check this article out.

Check out this link for information about the Uncluttered course, which I highly recommend!