The Flood of Aught Nine

Pin It So, as I was saying,(please see the prior blog entry of the Girl Scout Camping Extravaganza) Jennifer comes in the tent and says, "Gary (the site director says that the road into camp is flooded. No one can get out, and no one can get in. He says that the Army Corps of Engineers is working on this problem at the Cheatham County Dam, but in his estimation, we have about a 5% chance of getting out today."

What? WHAT?????

So there we are with the 35 people from our group, and over 200 from the Clarksville, TN service unit, who were also camping at the camp that weekend, stuck. Our troop has supplies for breakfast and lunch, but that is it. 250 trapped Girl Scouts, and the rain is continuing to fall.

Who ya gonna call???

Well, in lieu of Ghost Busters, the father of my son's best friend just happens to work for - are you ready for this? The Army Corps of Engineers. Yup. Jeff goes to disaster sites all around the southeast, and rescues damsels in distress for a living.

Do I know the right kind of people, or what?

So I called home and informed my dear, dear husband of our situation, and then told him that he needed to do two things for me: First, get on the phone with our friend Jeff, the engineer, and find out if he knows anything about what's going on over here, and tell him to get busy and get me out of here, if at all possible.

Also, since I had tried to contact a couple of my nearest and dearest at the Sonlight Forums, and all were unavailable, would he PLEASE put in a prayer request on those forums, and get people praying for us.

Meanwhile, Gary the site manager had to ride off and rescue the Brownies, Cadettes, and Seniors, who were all camped in the lowlands of the camp. Y'all, he got to the Brownies camp, told them they had to evacuate immediately, and by some heroic efforts, our leaders got those Brownies packed and out of there in 15 minutes. Which was an amazing feat in and of itself, and becomes even more amazing when I tell you that within 15 minutes after the Brownies were evacuated to our campsite, the road into their old campsite became submerged. There was a barbed wire fence and gate beside the road blocking access to a pasture. When I walked down there to check things out later in the morning, that 4 foot tall fence was completely submerged, all but the very top of the tall gate was under water. The creek had not only overflowed its banks, the whole bottom land of the camp became a rolling, brown, white water sea. That may sound contradictory, but I can't think of a more accurate description. It was too wide to be a river, moving at amazing speed and carrying huge logs and trees at a rapid rate. Quite frightening in its power, actually.

So, my dear, dear husband, the Big Bison, gets on the phone with Army Engineer Jeff. Jeff says that yes, the Army Corps of Engineers is indeed working on the problem, but their goal is to let the water out of the dam (which is what would help OUR situation) ever so slowly - only just enough to keep the dam from overflowing, because further down stream are two huge dams that are in need of major repair. (One of them was the Wolf Creek Dam, if any of you have heard of it.) If these other two dams become overly taxed it will result in the drowning of thousands of human beings. So, Jeff says, "Dude, I wouldn't plan on seeing her till Sunday, and it's just possible it could be not till Monday."

Great.

Well, Gary the camp site director comes back, questions me intently on what I have learned about what the Army Corps of Engineers is doing. Then he says that they are going to throw open the main kitchen of the camp, and we can all gather down there for lunch and evening dinner. He says that one of the Clarksville Girl Scout Leaders is a chef used to cooking for large groups of people. (Hallelujah!) We thank him, tell him we're good for lunch, but we'll come down to help with the evening meal.

And then we pray. And many of YOU prayed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We did a craft. We took a hike down to see the brown, rolling sea/river. Holy Guacamole! Kinda looked like the world's biggest latte in turmoil. That was around noon. Then we handed out Cookie Awards to our girls, for all the cookies they had sold earlier in the year.

And then, we took a minute to just process the situation as a group. Lisa, our leader, said, "OK, let's take two minutes and whine." And honestly, this may have been my favorite moment of the trip. I think we got out about one - maybe two whines, and before you knew it, this remarkable group of young women were laughing and joking and talking about how much fun this had been, and I thought my heart was going to bust, I was so proud of them.

I'm going to go ahead and brag on them just a little more, and say that Gary told me privately that the other groups were not handling being stuck well, but that our group was just so completely different. (AND YOU KNOW IT WASN'T BECAUSE OF ME AND MY SHINING INFLUENCE, SO YOU KNOW I'M NOT BRAGGING ON MYSELF!!!) But this, my friends, is the difference that Christians SHOULD be making in the world. The old salt and light thing - we weren't showing off. We were just allowing what Jesus had done on the inside of us to be lived on the outside. Anyway, as you can tell, it was a noticeable thing, and a blessing to poor beleaguered Gary.

I took another walk down about 3:00 in the afternoon, and the water was higher still. Oh, well, I thought, so much for getting people to pray.

And then a miracle happened....

Just before dinner, around 5:30, I asked Jen to walk down the hill with me one more time, and lo and behold, it was as if somebody had opened the bathtub drain, and all the water was draining out. I could see most of the road out of the camp!!!

Jen and I looked at each other, our eyes wide with amazement, and hope sprang anew!

We ran back up the hill, and told the girls to start packing up the cars JUST IN CASE we might be able to get out that night. We went down the hill, ate dinner, and then came the glorious news: WE WERE RELEASED!!!

I don't think any prisoner held in chains in the darkest of dungeons has felt much more joy than I did in that moment.

Five per cent were the odds we were given! But with mighty prayers ascending, and the sweet, sweet grace of God, Camp Tickamore was in my rear view mirror at 7:45 on Saturday night before Mother's Day, and Flood of Aught Nine ('09) was history.

Praise God for friends who pray, for girls with AMAZINGLY upbeat attitudes, for husbands who harass the Army Corps of Engineers, for Engineers who do their jobs well, for husbands who post prayer requests to imaginary friends, and most of all: for clean smelling bathrooms, a roof + 4 walls in a storm, and a complete lack of ticks and spiders in my bed.

The Great Girl Scout Camping Extravaganza

Pin It Have you ever had a deep sense of foreboding about something coming up, and then as events begin to unfold, you found out that it was so much worse than you ever dreamed it would be?

(If I were writing this on the Sonlight Forums, I would have just used the emoticon of the little red smiley head that rolls on the floor and laughs out loud to demonstrate the emotion behind that last sentence. We are deep into irony, here, folks!)

Well, uh, about that prayer request I posted when last I blogged....

What an adventure I have had!

We had had about 10 days straight of rain prior to the Girls Scout camp out I went on last weekend. Severe thunderstorms were in the forecast for the weekend.

What can I tell you? Every once in a while, the weathermen get it exactly right.

My dear friend and co-leader of the Juniors is Jen. You remember I had asked you to pray for her dear husband John's finger surgery. John had fallen off a ladder and broken his finger with a diagonal break, and thus needed surgery to repair it. They were going to put some pins in it, so that it could heal properly. The surgery was scheduled for the morning of the Thursday that we departed on our trip. We were scheduled to leave that afternoon.

Jen called and said the surgery went well, and she would be coming to transport girls and gear on Thursday evening, but would have to leave after dinner to go home and be with John, because someone needed to watch him for 24 hours. So, in my little world, what that meant to me was: Miss America was unable to fulfill her duties (at least for the first night), and the first runner up needed to don the tiara.

I hate to tell y'all, but when it comes to camping, the tiara doesn't rest easy on this girl's head. And even though I was first runner up, I can tell you that I'm pretty sure that I didn't get there by winning Miss Congeniality. At least, not in regard to my attitude as it related to camping in fairly primitive conditions during severe thunderstorms.

In fact, to digress for a moment, here is one of my very favorite stories, that is one of my favorite because it is absolutely true. It really, really happened to a friend of a friend when I was working for Metro Nashville Schools. No urban myth here, folks. I guarantee the veracity of this tale. My friend Sandy was the speech therapist at our school. I worked at an inner-city school where 95% of the students received free or reduced price lunch. Sandy served at our school and at another inner-city school called Berry Elementary, and one of her friends who was a kindergarten teacher there told her this story.

Five year old "Johnny" was a veteran of the Head Start program, which was a federally funded early childhood education program. He had been attending Head Start for two years, so when the new school year began that fall, "Johnny" was moved up to Kindergarten. At noon, on the first day of school, "Johnny" began packing up his book bag with his stuff, and his teacher asked him, "Johnny, what are you doing?" to which Johnny replied, "Well, you know, it's time to go." His teacher said, "Oh, no, Johnny, not just yet", to which Johnny responded, "But, Mrs. Smith, when the Big Hand is up at the top of the clock, and the Little Hand is up at the top of the clock, it's time to go." Mrs. Smith smiled patiently and indulgently and said, "Well, yes, Johnny, that was true last year at Head Start. But you're a big boy now. You're in Kindergarten, and in Kindergarten, we stay at school for three more hours. You get to stay till 3:00." Johnny stared at her momentarily with his jaw hanging open in dumb unbelief, until he finally summoned up the wherewithal to respond, "Well, who the hell signed me up for this?"

So, I'm betting that you can make the connection here, but just in case you can't, let me connect the dots. Yes, OK, yes, I signed up to be a Girl Scout Leader. But it was out of love for my daughter, love for my friend Jennifer, admiration for the other leaders in my troop, and a misbegotten belief that Jennifer, who had a year's worth of leadership experience on me, would always be there to blaze the trail, and pave the way. I was there as her back-up, to support as best I could. But in the immortal words of Prissy from Gone With The Wind, "Lawd, Miss Scah-lett, I don't know nuffin' bout birthin' no babies." By the way, if you remember that scene, Scarlett immediately applies a swift backhand to Prissy's hysterical face. This strategy might have served me well as I contemplated leading the Junior girls on this camping trip. But instead of smacking me, our patient and always competent, cool as a cucumber in any crisis leader Lisa rose to the occasion with a sight more godliness than Katy Scarlett O'Hara, and prayed with me, instead of smacking me.

When we arrived at the camp site, the first thing that happened was that we discovered that it was a BANNER year for ticks. Oh, yeah! One step out of the van and into the grass, and two of our little girls were covered. Bug spray was immediately and liberally applied. Our camp site consisted of one small cabin that we called the lodge. It had 4 walls and a roof, electrical outlets and light bulbs, which were a blessing. The lodge was surrounded by woods and a bunch of platform tents. They were covered with sturdy canvas, and full of spiders. We swept, we sprayed, we took dominion.

How to describe the latrines? Hmm...well. All over Middle Tennessee are billboards and signs displaying the tourist trap/natural wonder that is known as Ruby Falls. It is an underground cavern that you hike down into, where they flip on the multicolored lights, and suddenly you see what you have been hearing on the hike down the underground hill: a towering waterfall, all lit up with red and yellow lights. The water is descending in loud gushing splats upon the limestone below. In our latrines, well, YOU were Ruby Falls, if you follow my drift. All the little girls were terrified to climb up on the wooden box (it was equipped with a toilet seat) and park there teeny hineys over the abyss. Who could blame them? Some of the older girls made great sport of shining flashlights down into the pit to see what they could see. I understand that a shoe and a water bottle had misbegottenly made their descent into the terrible depths. And the smell? How can I describe the stench? It might have been enough to put you off your feed for a week. It was certainly enough to make a bunch of 10-12 year old girls want to "hold it" for as long as they could. I looked at the girls who told me they were planning on holding it, and told them, "Girls, it's going to be a lo-o-o-o-o-ng weekend....you might wanna try to get used to it...."

Jennifer (God bless her) was able to stay with us through dinner, but then she needed to get back to her dear husband John, because the doctor's office had told her that someone needed to be with him for 24 hours following the surgery. We made it through cooking eclairs (????) , a Girl Scout "delicacy" of crescent rolls roasted over the campfire on dowels (they kept sliding off the sticks into the fire, due to my brilliant innovation of wrapping the dowels in foil and spraying them with cooking spray) filled with processed pudding from those pudding cups, and iced with chocolate icing from the canned prepared frosting that you buy in the store. (To my mind, this is nothing short of a processed nightmare of goo.) The girls loved them. We brought the girls into the "lodge" (the room with electric light bulbs) and did a final "de-ticking". Did you know that Duct Tape works really well for peeling off seed ticks that haven't yet embedded??? Oh, the things you learn... And then Lori (one of the Moms) and I went off for a final spider "search and destroy" mission that involved napalming the insect life in the girl's tents into the great beyond. One of the funnier moments? Lori sidled up to me and whispered, "Susan, there's something heinous in one of the tents, and we've got to get the girls out of there calmly and quickly. And, I'm thinking of telling them all that we've got ice cream back in the lodge or something." The only problem with that plan being, of course, that we had no ice cream... But our Girl Scouts were undaunted. I went to the tent, said, "Girls, step out for a second, I've gotta kill a bug." and they stepped out, Lori and I entered, the bug was dispatched, and all was right with the world. Then Valerie, another Mom, did a beautiful devotional for the girls centered around I Corinthians 13, where she beautifully personalized the chapter, and challenged each of the girls to demonstrate on the camping trip that, "Molly was patient, and Diane was kind,..." and off we all went to dreamland. Right?

Well, not exactly. Then the severe thunderstorms rolled in. BOOM!!!! All night long. I'd drift off for a while, and then, BOOM! crash rattle shudder I don't know how to tell you how intense a thunderstorm can be when there's nothing between you and it but a sheet of canvas and a couple of 2x4's, but it was intense.

And obviously, the girls were NOT going to sleep. On a normal camping trip, they would have been keyed up and excited to be together, but add in the ticks, the spiders, the bladders that were not being completely emptied because, let's face it, that latrine was nasty scary, and what my dear daughter described as the blitzkrieg invasion of the Nazis into Poland (aka the thunder and lightening and deluge of incredible amounts of rain) and, well, nobody slept much the first night.

We had planned a no-cook breakfast the following morning, and breakfast was a breeze. The girls worked together like a cheerful well-oiled machine, and breakfast prep and clean-up happened without batting an eye. We walked over to the tree climbing place, which was our outdoor adventure activity for the Juniors, and amazingly, we were able to do it, even though it began raining while we were doing it. Our activity coaches had told us that if it began to thunder, we would have to close down the activity, but happily, the whole thing was done, and the girls were amazing, stepping outside their comfort zones, and stretching to reach new heights. My own dear daughter must receive a small shout out, since after all, this is MY blog. She made it up 35 feet into the air, conquering her fear of heights, and so did the other girls as well. The Moms and the girls of our troop were VERY proud, and rightfully so. Jennifer joined us at the tree climbing activity, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief, as if I had once again regained use of my right and left arms, after having them tied behind my back.

Lunch was baked potatoes cooked in the coals, and while they roasted, Jennifer had brought a neat activity of making fire starters out of melted candle wax and dryer lint, poured into paper egg cartons. While we were making them, the idea came to us somewhat serendipitously that we could dip pine cones tied with string into the melted deliciously scented wax and make something with a lovely scent for our Moms for Mother's Day, so each of the girls had fun doing that, too.

We ate, the rains came again, but we ate in the lodge, so all was well, and then we got a call from Jennifer's husband, John. John said that some severe thunderstorms were moving into our area, and so rather than go on our planned hike, we went down to the big barn at the camp, where they have a stage and dress up clothes, and prepared skits for the evening's campfire. (The barn was also the place where scouts were to gather in the event of a tornado, so this seemed like the prudent thing to do. And the fact that it tied in neatly with what we needed to do anyway - practice our skits - was just icing on the cake.) The girls had a blast, and came up with hilarious original skit ideas.

Then it was time to go for our annual trip to the 1950's burger joint we go to each year. The weather cleared, burgers and shakes were consumed, and we all had a fabulous time. Back to camp for the final campfire, where the skits were performed, marshmallows were roasted, s'mores were eaten, songs were sung, and just as things were winding down: the rains came again.

We were staying at a camp called Camp Sycamore - which I fondly renamed Camp Tickamore. And what might be helpful to understand about our troop is that we are a group of home-schoolers, and we have multiple age levels in our troop: from Brownies up to Seniors. Each of these groups - the Brownies, the Juniors, and the Cadettes and Seniors were staying at a different camp site within Camp Tickamore. Our campfire was held at Whispering Oaks, at a lower part of the camp near Sycamore Creek, where the Brownies were staying. So as the campfire ended, we had to disperse back to our various camp sites. The Juniors were in our platform tents up on the hillside, and the Cadettes and Seniors were at Beech Bend, which I never saw personally, but I was told that before we had arrived, due to all the previous rain, the road to their campsite had recently washed out. So it was terribly rutted, and very difficult to get into or out of. So back to our respective campsites we went to hunker down for the severe thunderstorms of the evening.

The Juniors were EXHAUSTED, which was good. We were banking on a better night's sleep on the second night. Alas, for me, this was not to be. I did sleep, off and on. Jennifer told me this, because she said I snored, which I of course know to be absurd since I am nothing but cute all the time. (Where's my rolling eyes smilie when I need it?) But the Nazis were once again at work, apparently doomed by some mysterious time loop to forever re-conduct the London Blitz. BOOM!!! BOOM!!! went the V-2 rockets of thunder all. night. long. And the howling of the wind was so incredibly loud! I kept watching to see if things (like scarecrows or tin woodsmen) were blowing sideways by the front flap of the tent. Water was certainly blowing in. But we seemed to be staying on the ground, so this seemed to me to be a good sign.

When morning finally came, I woke to the sound of a truck engine. Jennifer was up first, and went outside to talk to Gary, the site director. I was lying there on my cot, thinking, "Well, we made it through the night. Thank You, God!!! I can go HOME to my clean bathrooms! And my spider-free bed, with my strong, handsome and comforting Big Bison to hold me tight!"

And then, Jennifer came back through the flap of the tent....

...to be continued....

Pray for me, please.

Pin It We need prayer on lots of levels around here, dear friends.

I'll tell you about the first part today.

Today is my Girl Scout camping trip, and it will be under very primitive rainy conditions. My co-leader and dear friend Jen: her husband John is having surgery this morning for a badly broken finger. Please pray that John's surgery is successful, and that he has no difficulties with the anesthesia. If things DON'T go easily, I will have my responsibility with the Scouts I am co-leading greatly increased, and, frankly, Jen was spearheading and carrying the greatest amount of weight in leading these girls. I am basically back-up. Or at least that WAS the plan.

So, please pray for poor John's surgery this morning. Yes, I know my reasons for praying for John have a great deal of self-interest involved. But John and Jen don't mind. They're glad to have the prayers!

The Big Bison has a doctor's appointment today, and that will require lots of prayer, too, I think. But we want to hear what the doc has to say first. Please, just pray for us to make wise decisions in regard to my sweet husband's health.

If you want to write out the prayer that you are praying in the comments section of my blog, that would be a great encouragement to me.

Thanks, you guys!!! Love you!

Happy Birthday to the Big Bison

Pin It
Happy Birthday to the Biggest Bestest Bison who ever roamed the Boonies.

My Bison is a treasure,
a joy unto my life.
I love him without measure,
I'm proud to be his wife.

He is my beloved. He is my best friend. He loves God first, best and most. He is the World's Best Dad. He is an amazing songwriter and a musician extraordinnaire. He is a mighty hunter, who keeps his family's freezer well supplied with food year round. And he still turns my head and makes my heart go pitty-pat. I don't just love him; I admire him, too. After choosing to follow Jesus, choosing to live my life with this man was the very best decision I have ever made.

I am one blessed woman, and don't I know it.

Please, feel free to leave my Big Bison any Big Birthday Greetings you like in the comments section of my blog. He's the best, and might enjoy feeling the love you send his way.