Weather and The Worries

Everyone's talking about the approaching weather - the storms have already turned the skies gray with a jaundiced undercoat of yellow - and there's a unhealthy feel to the warm breeze.  Like a warning.  There'll be no escaping this one, I think dismally, this one's going to hit hard.  This one's going to scare the birds out of the trees.

Fierce weather scares me more than it used to.  I worry about flooding, about lightning strikes, about tornadoes and the possibility of a tree crashing through the roof.  I worry about fallen power lines and those patches of disabling high water and the drains backing up, about losing electricity.  I worry about the neighborhood cats finding shelter and the outside dogs being brought in.  As useless as it is, if it even might happen, if it even could happen, I worry about it.

Worry doesn't accomplish anything and it devours happiness, I remember being told as a child.  It goes hand in hand with being afraid.  

By mid afternoon, the sky looks even more unhealthy and when I let the dogs out, I can't help but notice how it's deathly still and beginning to get dark.  I can hear thunder in the distance and can feel the start of the rain. 

By midnight it's been raining hard and steady for ten hours.  There hasn't been much thunder or lightning but when I slip into rain gear to take the dogs out, I can already see the damage and even hear rushing water.  By morning there's no change and no change is forecast.  We're due for at least another three days just like this one.  The park near the house is now a lake - a thirty foot deep drainage ditch (now looking more like a raging river) has massively overflowed and spilled into the street - schools are closed on both sides of the river, roads are littered with stalled cars and fallen tree limbs, high water barricades have been erected all through the neighborhood.  Two parishes have been declared disaster areas and mandatory evacuations are in progress.

On the fourth day, I start to see the inevitable, biblical posts about how the weather has been sent from God to punish the transgressors who support gay rights, abortions, open borders, raising the minimum wage, Muslims and Democrats as a whole.  Pray for Louisiana memes begin to show up in my news feed and worry gradually turns to disgust.

If the best we have to offer is plagues and prayers, I believe I'll put my faith in sandbags.

On the fifth day, the rivers, canals and bayous, some as much as ten feet over flood stage finally stabilize and start to recede. More rain is still expected but there is cautious hope that the worst may be over. The damage done and the costs of the physical clean up will likely be in the millions. It's impossible to even begin to calculate the emotional price tag.

It's a good time to remember that all the worry in the world wouldn't have done even the smallest amount of good.

Here comes the sun.