It has been 82 days since the worst storm to hit Western North Carolina in recorded history roared through our lives, dumping upwards of 30+ inches of rain in some areas, causing rivers and creeks to leap their banks and engulf houses and business and roads and bridges, triggering over 2000 landslides, and damaging or destroying an estimated 40% of the trees in Buncombe County alone. It left a mess. A devastating mess.
Word on the street is that only 5% of the debris has been picked up so far. The entire cleanup will likely take years.
The reality is that there is mess and there will be mess. For a long time.
It can be hard to look at mess. We equate mess with laziness or poverty or litter bugs. We equate it with people who don’t care and even assume that messiness is somehow a measure of the character of a people. So when that mess is staring us in the face, we want it gone. Now.
Mess is the unfortunate reality of an event that has wrought destruction.
The reality is that the aftermath of natural disasters isn’t all that different from the aftermath of the more personal ones.
Traumatic events leave a field of debris that can be very hard to absorb and process.
We want to rush past the mess. We want the cleanup to be simple, efficient, and in our time frame. We don’t want to see it any more.
The loss of a loved one. The death of a marriage. The betrayal of a friend. The fracturing of a family. The loss of a job or a home or an entire community. Innocence taken before its time. Trust obliterated by the one you thought was trustworthy. The shattering of a dream. The list could go on.
In natural disasters there is debris. Lots of it. Debris that can take years or decades to clean up. Debris caught in trees and lodged into riverbanks of our lives. The entire landscape is often changed forever. Landslides scour the earth to the bedrock. Rivers change course. Ancient groves of trees are leveled.
If a single storm can do this much damage to a world made of stone and earth and wood and all that has been built upon it, how much more can this storm or any storm, physical or relational or emotional, do to us humans who are made of flesh and bone and often the tenderest of hearts.
If the physical world cannot endure a torrent of wind and rain without sustaining jaw-dropping, life altering damage, why do we think that our emotional worlds, our very souls can absorb a traumatic event and bounce back, neat and tidy, in record time.
And why do we rush our friends and family, our coworkers and neighbors, to clean up themselves on our timetable so we don’t have to look at their mess?
It’s natural to want it all fixed now. But it won’t be. It can’t be.
Our towns, our houses, our landscapes, our relationships, our hearts will all take time to heal from whatever devastation has come their way.
Let’s be patient with each other. And with ourselves.
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