After the Storm: Finding Love, Unity and Healing in the Wake of Texas Tragedy

Fourth of July weekend is supposed to be a celebration of our country, our freedom, and our families and friends. We gather in classic American style for barbecues, boating, camping, and pool parties. We pay tribute to the brave soldiers who have dedicated their lives to preserving the freedom we enjoy, and we light up the sky with fireworks as a symbol of our gratitude and hope.

This fourth of July weekend in Texas began dark, stormy, oppressive, and ominous. The rain was relentless. What started as a drizzle of disappointment quickly turned to torrential terror. My hands shake as I attempt to write words that will inevitably be insufficient to describe what our beautiful region, our home, our community just endured. Whether you are cleaning up wreckage and debris in your own destroyed backyard, or helping a neighbor, or still waiting for confirmation of your greatest fear, or beginning the long slog of a grief trek, or you are a weary rescue worker, or a prayerful bystander watching the news reports — we are all collectively flooded. Our yards, our parks, our riverbanks, our roads, our neighborhoods, our families, our friends, our communities, our hearts, our nervous systems in one way or another, we are all flooded.

Our collective grief

Clients are calling me, grieving for friends or friends of friends, and all the innocent, beautiful children who are lost. Friends and clients who consider their camp memories to be the purest, very best part of their lives, the happy place or safe place they go in their minds when they need sanctuary, are now sleepless and sobbing. Grief comes in so many forms. Bereavement as well as the mourning of lost dreams, the way we pictured our lives were going to be. If you are an empathic person, the collective ache right now is stifling, suffocating.

Look for the helpers

An experience of devastation ultimately brings the next question, “Now what?” Beloved Fred Rogers said something I will never forget. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'” It’s no surprise that Mister Rogers had a wise mother like this. If you believe that what you focus on expands, then looking only at the devastation will expand the devastation. Looking for the helpers expands hope. Helpers are everywhere, showing up from all directions. We are all called to be helpers. We can pray, donate money, help clear debris, provide food and water, love those who are grieving, and offer whatever gifts or talents we possess to be used in the process of the collective healing.

A client said something beautiful yesterday: “My well-being is tied to your well-being.” That statement is the very essence of community, of oneness, of unity, of humanity, of faith, of family, of friendship, of Love itself. Devastation can bring division, or it can bring connection. Right now is when we choose. A flood of water can be followed by a flood of love. Buried beneath pain are miracles. Miracles born in the aftermath, the quiet rekindling of hope.

In awe of what lies underneath.

The everlasting arms.

RELATED: Where to Donate and Help Central Texas Flood Relief Efforts

About Kristin Armstrong

Kristin Armstrong is the author of eight books including: Happily Ever After, Strength for the Climb, Work in Progress:  An Unfinished Woman’s Guide to Grace, Heart of my Heart, Mile Markers: The 26.2 Most Important Reasons Why Women Run, Ties that Bind and YES.  Her work has led to appearances on Oprah, The Rachel Ray Show, NPR, Good Morning America and The Today Show.  In her company, Kristin Armstrong Consulting, she specializes in helping people through life transition zones in career, relationships, parenting and purpose.