Texas Hill Country

When I heard of the Guadalupe River’s relentless surge, swallowing up Mystic Camp in Kerrville, Texas, my heart utterly broke. The news of missing people, especially children, then ripped it out all over again. Losing my own child had shattered my world, so I intimately understood the agonizing pain those parents would endure for years to come. The more the city and its outlying towns succumbed to the flood’s wrath, the stronger I felt a profound calling to go down there. By the end of that first harrowing week, I turned to my husband and told him, simply, “I need to go. God is calling me.” He didn’t object; quite the opposite, actually, he encouraged me.

Once the decision was made, I swiftly organized everything around the house, and that following Monday – just three days after making up my mind – I left. I drove all day, making a stop at the halfway point in Kansas to pick up a friend who was joining me. We left her house the next morning, driving deep into the night, finally arriving in Kerrville extremely late. We simply collapsed and slept in the van that night.

The next day, we plunged straight into it, finding where we could volunteer. Our assigned location was about eleven miles down Texas Highway 39, right along the Guadalupe River. Driving that stretch of highway was incredibly hard. The floodwaters had receded, but what remained was nothing short of mass destruction. Downed trees lay everywhere. Smashed up cars were strewn like toys. Buildings were toppled, and debris covered everything. Remnants of people’s belongings hung eerily in trees, piled three feet or more high along the edge of the road, a stark, painful reminder of lives abruptly upended.

Soon enough, I drove by Camp Mystic, and my heart burst open. Tears streamed down my face. The raw thought of those young lives, carried away by the floodwaters, lingered, especially knowing the search for missing individuals was still actively underway. Helicopters buzzed overhead, a constant presence, alongside countless volunteers, medical professionals, military personnel, local and neighboring police, and firefighters. It looked like a war-ravaged area, and it was almost more than I could bear.

And then we drove past a small, poignant memorial site alongside the road, dedicated to the children lost. A simple wooden cross bore an engraved inscription, marking the love for these young souls and the broken hearts of all their parents. Beneath the cross, a heart-shaped area overflowed with teddy bears. Outside of my own son’s funeral, this was one of the hardest sights I have ever witnessed.

We arrived at our assigned location soon after, and went straight to work, tackling cleanup. As I surveyed the outside of the house where we were working, I couldn’t help but notice the distinct water line on the siding, at least three feet high. From that yard, I scanned the horizon for the river. Behind the house, a steep hill quickly rose into an embankment, quite a bit higher than the house itself. I looked across the road and could just barely glimpse the river’s path. I walked over into the yard across the street and then around to the back. There it was, the river, nestled at the bottom of a significant drop. From that vantage point, it was chillingly clear: the river had to have risen at least 15 feet to even reach the front of that house. And for it to have climbed three feet up the side of the house where I was working, across the road, it meant the river had surged at least another 15 feet beyond that. The sheer power of it was incomprehensible.

My friend and I stayed for a full week, dedicating our time to volunteering. The KOA campsite, bless their hearts, graciously offered us space at no charge, recognizing that we were here on our own dime, pouring our resources into the relief efforts. Leaving felt bittersweet. I truly feel blessed and incredibly honored that I was able to volunteer in this devastating time of need, to be a small part of the healing process for a community that had lost so much.

If you ever get the chance to do this, take it!