Here We Go Again

Last time a Category 3+ hurricane headed toward my part of the Gulf Coast I was sitting at a meeting and living in a hotel in Sacrament, CA. All my church members were frantically preparing to evacuate and I was stuck in a hotel room, watching minute by minute on any tv within my range of vision. As Rita took aim, all I could do was sit there, jittering, thinking about all the stuff that could/should be done to get my house ready for the storm and worrying about whether my members needed any help to get ready and get out of town.

This time, I'm here. At the moment, Gustav is a Cat 4, and has just a little bit more to reach Cat 5. The local authorities have called for voluntary evacuation, especially for those with special needs. We may be looking at mandatory evacuation as early as tomorrow morning.

I'm not stupid. I remember well how little of our infrastructre was functioning after Rita and have no great desire to spend days in sweltering heat. And there WILL be sweltering heat after Gustav gets through.

There are some who think that the "tree cleaning" that happened with Rita has pretty much handled the tree-limbs-dropping-on-power/phone lines problem. Yes, I'm sure it will help. The electric company has done a really good job of keeping those dangling limbs away from the lines. BUT I have a tree in my backyard that will take out the power lines if the worst of the storm heads this way. It leans toward the back of my property, where the power lines are. One good hurricane-strength shove and it's gone! And so are the power lines.

So I'm leaving town. Not today, but probably tomorrow at some point.

Now I get to jitter about my members who've decided that, no matter what, they aren't evacuating. Which is more important? Lives and being available for family, children, grandchildren or a building?

My son hasn't experienced anything like this. He's leaving today to head up to Oklahoma and spend the evacuation with friends. Clothes are washing, he loaded the dishwasher, and covered the piano with a tarp.

Then he wanted to take the metal lining out of the brick planter that's just inside the front door. The goal was to put valuable stuff in the planter, then put the line back in it, so no one could steal the stuff in it. My response? They've just things. They can be replaced. I'm taking the important stuff with me, and the rest? Well, it'll either survive the storm, not get swiped if someone breaks in, or be damaged. I'll live. It's just STUFF!

Then there are those who heard the stories of how easy it was to evacuate if you just wait until the next day. So there are a lot of people I've heard say that they aren't planning to go in the first wave. Just what we need to ensure that there are 1,000's of people stuck in cars on the road when Gustav finally makes landfall. *sigh*

Part of the reason for this post is to give me a record of what's going on with me. I've been keeping an eye on Gustav since he became a legitimate threat. Even though I'm in town and there are things to keep me busy this time, there's still that nagging sense of being on edge which is right at the edge of my vision. Hard to describe the feeling. It's sort of a sense of excitement mixed with a healthy fear of what might come.

The dog has been aware that there's something going on. She's in mild freak mode, barking at the slightest sound that might be interpreted as someone encroaching on her domain. I think she finally wore herself out, 'cuz she's sleeping in the other room.

It's totally amazing what one can accomplish in terms of decluttering when you have a category 4 (they just announced it) hurricane aiming at you. I have stuff in my office that I've been putting off shoving into the file cabinets for almost a year. All of the sudden, it's become less important to save every single page of those old sermons. (I do have them on the computer, mostly.) And all of the sudden, I find myself saying, "Self, what's a lost sermon in the grand scheme of things? Probably the only person who'd notice is me, and there's a good chance even I'd forget!

The other thing which has been going through my mind is what our worship on Sunday should look like. Somehow, just the usual way of worship doesn't seem adequate. and I'm not sure that any sermon I could come up with would be sufficient. So I've decided to do something different tomorrow. Lectio divina, the reading of scripture, meditating on it, listening for what God is saying to you right now, I'm hoping it will feed some nervous souls. I've found some hymns to use with the scriptures I'll be using, so that may help as well.

After worship, we're putting tarps on the pianos and organ. That may help too! *chuckle* Nothing like some activity and visible progress to help soothe ragged and frayed nerves.

THEN, I hope we can chivvy all of us out of town!

Well, it's time to finish up a couple of pre-hurricane tasks, then I'll be ready to bail when the authorities say, "GO!"