So, Harvey happened. He happened to us in a big way.  Fifteen inches for five days kind of a way. It’s not the feet for weeks some of our friends had. But it meant displacement and rebuild. It meant hurry up and wait time and time again. For the water to recede. For the muck out.  For insurance. For the dry out. For the inspection.  For insurance. For the contractor. For the carpenter. For insurance. For the paint to dry. For the floors to set. For the appliances to be installed. For insurance.

In all the hurry up and wait, there wasn’t a lot of time to deeply process the events and circumstances. We went through the initial coping. We rode the waves of it all on the prayers and support of our community. We tangibly and unmistakably knew God’s presence and grace in every single aspect of Harvey and the aftermath. Every, single, one. I could go day by day and find instances of the times God’s hand was particularly involved in the decisions, the timing, the answers to prayers and worries.

Now we’re home.

As the swirls of decision making and waiting and uncertainty begin to settle, we are able to let go of the tangled web of emotion and memory we’ve been clutching so tightly out of a need to survive. Drop that web and the whole train might derail. The train is in the station and web begins to loosen.

It does so on it’s own. One thread pulled by remembering you’ve lost that item you’re looking for. It flooded. Another tugged by others, delivery people and friends alike, commenting on how much work there is left in your neighborhood. Yes, but you should have seen it a month ago. This seems so much better! And it’s normal now to us. A knot within the knot exposes itself when you start sifting through old years of school work to prepare for storage. That last year I thought was a part of this school year wasn’t, and what happened to the first semester? Where did that time go? What did we accomplish?

It’s a knot of time and experiences. Where did that time go? When we left my baby was still a tiny baby, and now he’s pushing a year and we’re just back home. I spent a major part of his first year distracted and frenzied. When Harvey hit we were a week away from starting the Fall semester, and the plans for the year were beginning to harden. Were it not for our weekly enrichment program I’m really not sure what we would have done. The time Harvey stole from us has affected us much more than the things he stole. The flood took our sense of time, our expectation of time, our routine. Everything took time. Everything was hurried, almost nothing was on purpose. At least not by our own design.

I’m fine, really, I’m fine. I’m not sad or angry. It’s just these little moments of reflection now and then that make things clearer, straighten things out. Things feel normal this way. The old normal is history. It left in a sudden, abrupt way. Most times old normals gradually change as activities and people wax and wane from our lives. Or they change by choice in a move or job change. I only hope that the new normal becomes a little more like the old normal as this knot unties and boxes are unpacked and furniture is finally put in place.