Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

harvey

A Year Later

by 1 Comment

One year ago, during this week, Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston.

I went to church Sunday for the commemorative service and left heavy. It’s silly.  The service was tremendously uplifting with amazing stories of hope and restoration.  Families who had lost everything except their faith stood before a packed church to share how God had met their needs. They had been through an overwhelming year and yet they stood in brave testimony to how faithful God is.

But, as I’d mentioned last week, I had already been in a sad season. So it may have just been seeing all those photographs, memories flooding back, coupled with my current state and some major challenges my dearest friends are facing knocked me back.

I wanted to write, but I always like to balance my “heavier” posts with fun things like look at this cute floral blouse or let me tell you a funny triplet story.

I just didn’t have a bit of that in me.

Then, today, I went back and looked at “on this day” on Facebook. Y’all, those kill me.  Hang on to what I saw on THIS day.  I want to start with the only two posts in my feed from two years ago on this day because I’d like to end with Harvey and what’s next.

First, two years ago on August 29th, was the above photograph from Christine Caine with this verse:

These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. (Rev. 3:7-8)

I could hear little preschool voices in my ear singing, we are weak but He is strong.

He opens the doors. Or shuts them.  And our weakness won’t change His timing and His plan.

Then, on the same day, I wrote a post for God Sized Dreams called In His Time.  I wrote about when I stop trying to put it all together, that’s where God starts.  I closed with:

And I just pray, every day, He will keep my eyes on today. I pray He will keep me from seeing what is to come. I pray He will allow my future to stay unknown (a particularly painful prayer for a control freak). He has shown me over and over when I take my hands off the wheel, He steers me in the best direction. I may encounter delays, storms and darkness, but when I arrive safely to the shore, in His time, it’s always worth the wait.

(The bold was in the original post.)

Then, a year ago, my feed was full. I had written finally about Harvey hitting Houston.

FEMA going towards our house

Even though we were not the hardest hit, by a longshot, I wrote about how painful the storm was for all Houstonians.  How, in a prayer vigil, I cried out, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over… Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you. Isaiah 43:1-6

I asked friends from around the world to pray that Addicks and Barker Reservoirs would hold. The rescue boats were up and down our streets.  I didn’t know then we’d have to evacuate the next day, assisted by the wonderful ATF men from Florida.

On that day, I didn’t know that on this day, a year later, there would be different storms. That the streets would be, thankfully, completely dry, but my spirit would be submerged.  You can’t know, year over year, when the good and bad will be.  But the truth a year ago and the year before that and from before time began is that He will direct our paths. He will open, or shut, doors, and He will be right there next to us when we pass through the waters.

Even though I’ve known that in my head for a very long time, it felt like fresh news to my soul this morning. I felt new and ready for what is next: Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. (Neh. 8:11)

Three Weekends

by 4 Comments

There have been three weekends since we returned to our home after the hurricane.

We had the weekend Harvey hit, followed by the week we evacuated. The following weekend we returned and put our house back together.

Then, now I see, came the three weekends to fulfill our home’s new mission.

The first weekend, September 9th, was my birthday. 

By then, we had cleaned our house and helped our neighbors. I desperately wanted to thank the three families who circled us the week of the evacuation.  These three families, all friends from our school who have kids in class with ours, were gifts.  We had already been friends, but nothing deepens a bond like hardship.  Two of the men swooped in with their trucks and strength and moved things out (and then back in) to our home while another regularly provided insider intel from his corner in the newsroom.  The women calmed the kids and encouraged me and housed us and fed us and generally offered breathtaking hospitality.

So I asked Bray if we could host a dinner in the backyard for the families on my birthday as a way of thanking them. Instead of presents, we’d collect hurricane supplies.

That night was a gift.

Bray cooked out. The kids swam.  I laid out the table on the deck with candles and flowers and we thanked our generous friends.

The second weekend, several of my girlfriends and I had planned a weekend away to the beach which we canceled when the storm hit. Bray and I had been in town all week – he gutting different houses every day and me having to return to work fulltime.  Our street looked normal on the south end and like a war zone on the north end.  The kids were trying to return to a routine at school.

We needed a day away.

So, the second weekend, we left town. Bray took the boys to his family farm to help his father, and I took a day to run little bit up to Fort Worth to see some of my oldest (tenure, not age) friends.  She and I did nothing Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday we hung out at my matron of honor’s home all day, and Sunday we hung out in another dear friend’s home.

The time away, for all of us, helped us find our way back to our calling: Helping.

The first day I returned home after evacuating, even before moving back in, I found a scripture card under our kitchen table.

On one side, Psalm 138:7a: Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me.

On the other side, 1 Corinthians 3:21b: For all things are yours.

I promised God then and there our house would be open to anyone and used for His purposes.

I just hadn’t quite known how or even had the ability to do it yet.

Until the third weekend.

The third weekend, we opened our doors much wider. Much of the news coverage of the hurricane’s devastation has subsided, but the number of people in need is still staggering.  Many people we know are still trying to find temporary accommodations, drifting from house to house, or staying in extended-stay motels with their entire family (including pets).

I texted everyone I knew in that situation: come Saturday. Bring your friends.  Bring your pets.  Just come.  Kids can swim.  I’ll feed you.  Don’t bring a thing.

I made pans and pans of chicken enchiladas (my go to comfort food), set out chips and salsa and a stack of paper plates. If you know me, I’m not an easy hostess.  Laid back is not a term regularly used to describe me.  I need everything perfect.  Glassware is a requirement along with cloth napkins with napkin rings.  The neighbors table worked for me because it kept people out of my messy home.  Well, that wouldn’t work anymore.  It was time to open the doors.

Five families came Saturday night.

The house was messy but the kids running and yelling never noticed.  The adults kept commenting how wonderful it was to eat a home cooked meal.  My meal wasn’t extraordinary, but they had all been living on take out so anything out of an oven was a gift.

I wasn’t stressed because all people needed was space. They didn’t need china table settings and jazz playing in the background.  They needed their kids to be able to swim so they could sit around the table and swap rescue and clean up stories.

Sunday, more families and kid drop offs so adults could demo.

The house was loud and messy and perfect. I had never felt more full.  Nerf gun wars and footballs whizzing by and wet floors from waterlogged kids.  Bowls of popcorn and beanbags for movie watching and sticky popsicles.

This is what our house was meant to do.

And all over the city, that’s what all the dry houses are doing.  In a season of vitriolic political discourse and heartbreaking natural disasters, neighbors open their doors wider.

We are gaining more friends.  We are loving bigger.  It’s paper plates and sweat stained clothes and caring about the inside instead of the outside.  No one even grabbed a camera because all the beauty was in the conversation and the friendship.

It’s what I’m praying our home and our family can do for years to come, even after the rebuilding is complete.  This is the new normal.

The Harvey Roller Coaster, Part 2

by Leave a Comment

The rest of Wednesday was a blur.  (If you’re picking up our Harvey story now, you can read the first part here.)

Alicia, our lovely host, had a bustling house with helpers and friends for the kids. Bray half-drove/half-walked back into our side of the neighborhood before dinner and the waters rise appeared to be slowing.

Still no water in our house.  We texted nearby neighbors; “waters slowing” was the response.

I had an amazing group of prayer warriors around the country who had been praying since the weekend.  I quickly voxed them an update when FEMA arrived and then provided another update when the waters appeared to be holding.

Our other angel rescuers brought the whole crew from Alicia’s home to theirs for a delicious meal.  It was time for the evening briefing with Harris County and the Army Corps.  At 7:30, Bray and I stood transfixed in front of the television as the rest of the dinner guests milled in the background.

All three previous updates reported additional waters rising in Buffalo Bayou from the reservoirs.  Then this report:  we believe the Bayous will stabilize.  If your house is flooded, it will likely remain so for an additional two to three weeks.  If your house is not flooded, we do not expect any additional structure flooding.

I cried, once again.

The roller coaster of the day and the five solid nights of no sleep had worn me through, but I knew this was good.  If only I could believe it.  Good news had regularly been contradicted with bad. Bray and I clung to each other like life rafts.

Our dinner host gathered everyone in a circle in his living room to pray, including all our kids.  This is important for them to see, he said.  It was.

After he prayed, I fell to the ground to offer my own meager prayer.  I said a quick prayer of confession for embarrassing my kids with the tears and ground-dropping, but then offered our house to God’s service.  If we make it through this thing dry, then allow our house to be a place where we serve others.  A Hannah prayer.

I slipped out the door and left a similar report and prayer with my amazing national prayer team.  We weren’t out of the woods, but the news was good.

Bray and I slept, for the first time in nearly a week, Wednesday night at Alicia’s.

Thursday morning, the report from those closer to the street: the water is steady.  No more rising.  Thursday night, I had to see it for myself.  The rock, where Bray marked the highest water mark, was dry.  The water remained close, but it must have fallen a few inches.

So, we ate out.  Alicia had loaned us a car (ours remain trapped in the driveway) and we were able to travel south of our neighborhood for Mexican food.  Aside from looking like worn rats, it resembled something normal.

We moved back home on Friday.  One week after Hurricane Harvey began to attack our city.

We still couldn’t get onto our street.  It was, and is, flooded.  But we could park down the street and around the corner and carry our belongings back in with the help of the same angels who evacuated us.

I’ll finish sharing what happened in the days since Friday tomorrow.

It hasn’t been pain or guilt free, but there’s not been a moment we don’t thank God for this miracle.  And so many of you were a huge part of it.  Please know how tremendously grateful we are for all of you.  We don’t understand why we were three houses away from flooding and it stopped, but we are committed to sharing what resources we have with others as they rebuild.

Harvey Hit Houston

by 16 Comments

I don’t know what to write.  It’s Monday night.  Harvey hit Friday.  Hurricane Harvey technically hit Rockport and then Refugio and Victoria and other southern Texas towns near to our heart (Bray’s family properties are in Seadrift and Refugio and were hammered).  But for me, Harvey hit Houston.

It didn’t land here, but it would have been better had it done so.  Called the worse flood in the history of the United States, it is not over.

If you do not live here, please hear me: IT IS NOT OVER.

If you are reading this today, please continue to pray.  Tomorrow could lead to incredibly dangerous new flood circumstances for new communities.  In one, one of my two best friends in Houston sits with her husband and dogs on the second floor.  In another, my other closest friend debates whether to call for a boat rescue for her and her husband and her kids because the reservoirs are about to flood their entire neighborhood.  She waits on the second floor.

A friend today was separated from her kids when FEMA made them take separate boats.  (They are back together and staying in a motel near where FEMA dropped them.)

Another waits in knee deep waters for a rescue boat.

One has lost power and sent a note to say I wouldn’t hear anything else because she had about 30 minutes left on her phone.

Vehicles cannot help people.  Boats are being called for from Houstonians not in flood conditions.  People who can are out in brutalized communities trying to literally save people from their rooftops.

I can do nothing.  My family is trapped in our flooded neighborhood.  Our house, miraculously, is still dry.  Our power, miraculously, is on.  Stunningly better circumstances than hundreds of thousands in my adopted hometown.

At night, we watch the news until after midnight and set our alarms for 2 am to check rising water when the security alarms don’t go off every thirty minutes.  Saturday and Sunday night I hid in the closet with the kids during the worst tornado warnings.  There were many more that came and went.  We haven’t slept.  We survive one night and wake up unbelievably grateful only to be confronted by another day’s rain.  It has not stopped raining since this morning.

The eldest bursts into tears at the drop of the hat.  The baby wants to punch things, and the little lady is exhausted.

We have put everything of value on tables and couches.  Pictures and memorabilia from over my life and the kids lives has been carried up to the attic.  Bray cleans drains, plastic-ed over the door frame, sets measuring stakes in the front yard, and drains the pool down.  We have packed bags which sit by the back door to evacuate next door to the second floor of a neighbors if the water continues to rise.

 

I finally cried today.  There are no words to describe the suffering.  People have lost everything.  One momma pushed her little boy in a blue Tupperware storage bin through the flood waters until she found a boat to take her to higher ground.  There, a bus transported them with their one plastic bag of belongings to the convention center.  One plastic bag of belongings.  When one family was asked why they didn’t heed a mandatory evacuation order, they replied, “we couldn’t afford to.”

Heartsick.

People have reached out and offered their homes but people in flooded neighborhoods can’t get out of their neighborhoods.  Everything you see on the news is not an exaggeration.  It isn’t showing the expanse of the destruction.

In my hopeless and fear, I cry out to God.  I do not understand why some lost everything and why some are still okay.  But when a friend began a 12 hour prayer vigil today at noon, I agreed to host one of the hours out of great anguish of my heart.  Nothing other than saving these lives and rebuilding matters.

I pray: The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.  Psalm 34:18

Lord, we are brokenhearted.  Please rescue us all.

I pray: But now, this is what the Lord says— he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead.
Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life.
Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Isaiah 43:1-6

Lord, we desperately need you to be with us in the sweeping rising waters.  Please Lord, hear our prayers. 

I pray: Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.  Psalm 42:7-8

Lord, in the deep we call to you.  Out of this deepness, we call for you to sweep over us instead of the waters.  Rescue us.  God of my life, stop the water.  Stop the rain.  Drain these rivers and bayous.  Please God.  

I can’t do anything else so I beg you to pray.  Particularly these next 48 hours.  Pray for Houston and her people.