I go to sleep praying for 11 missing girls. I wake to confirmation that one of them is dead. The other ten are likely dead, too. That’s 27 total.
I don’t know how to hold this.
I was once a little girl at summer camp on a river. My little girls were little girls at summer camp on a river, too.
Rivers are supposed to be safe places, places to root yourself beside, places where everything lives. I have planted much on the banks of rivers, including the plot of my own life.
And yet…
When I pray, as I do every morning, I don’t know what to say about the little girls at Christian camp, sleeping, now swept away, so I say to God, “I’m going to put this on the back burner, and let it simmer. I haven’t forgotten about it. I can’t forget about it.”
I press on praying. It is a privilege to have anything else to talk to God about. There are mothers praying somewhere in Texas who do not have the same luxury.
I read Psalm 139 aloud, “Before a word is on my tongue, you know all about it, Lord…”
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Feet together, toes pushing against cold rock, knees bent, I raise my arms above my head and jump. My hands pierce the surface of the water, making way for my body. It’s cold down here. Cold and dark. But also electric and quiet and tender. Eyes closed, self surrendered, I glide and merge and become. I am the river.
This is my favorite feeling.
It only lasts a moment. When my head pops up, back into the unswaddled wideness of life above water, my 16 year-old daughter, Eve, yells, “Mom. Teach me how to dive.” Her sister, London, is curious too. She’s headed to the Coast Guard in the fall and though she is a strong swimmer, her dive is weak. She’s less eager to try than her sister, less eager to do it wrong. But they both line up at the edge of the rock to practice. Their father joins the lesson next. He knows how to dive, but he’s new to it, and, as is his way, he’s excited to be better.
I have taught them all to dive before. Several times. I first taught Eve and London on the dock at the Christian camp by the river. They remember, but they don’t. I taught Justin at the pool down the street from our house in Texas. He was 40 and finally ready to enter the water in a more elegant fashion. He was terrible at diving until he wasn’t. Today he dives from the rock like the Greek men we swam with in Santorini, like diving is his birthright.
Eve is initially less capable. She flops. London is initially less coordinated. She kicks and flails. But over and over and over they dive. I offer corrections, encouragement, not that, try this… And the dives begin to look like dives.
Eve enters the water like it’s home—easy, natural, graceful. She’s smiling as her head breaks the plane, her eyes happily closed. She awakes and asks, “How was that?!”
“How did it feel?” I ask. “Wonderful,” she says like a girl who’s still dreaming.
Later we’ll dry off, change, and drop the girls off at work. They sell snow cones. As they get out of the car for their shared shift, they say, “Today was the perfect day.”
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I can’t stop thinking about my girls gliding through the water, swaddled. And I can’t stop thinking about the little girls in Texas, taken captive by the water, shrouded.
How can both things be true?
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I read Scripture at church on Sunday with my husband and one daughter (one missing from the stage because we’d sent her to camp that morning—I tried not to imagine her not coming home). We stood together and read Psalm 136, alternating lines as the church read aloud the repeated chorus. Justin said, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” London said “He alone does great wonders.” I said, “He led his people in the wilderness.” And twenty-six times the whole church affirmed, “His faithful love endures forever.”
During the sermon, our preacher encouraged us to write our own Psalm 136—How has God provided for you? Where have you witnessed the wonders of His creation? How have you been saved? Write it down. Tell Him.
I think of my happy family.
…His faithful love endures forever…
I think of the river beside my childhood camp, of manatees and clear water and learning to dive.
…His faithful love endures forever…
I think of the time I almost drowned in the Pacific Ocean but didn’t.
…His faithful love endures forever…
I think of standing beside my twenty year old brother’s coffin.1
…His faithful love endures forever…
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What does forever mean? It’s like everywhere but in time.
Yahweh is everywhere.
Yahweh is always.
Yahweh is everywhere always.
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This morning I’m studying for women’s Bible class and the author of my study tells me to read Psalm 139 aloud. So I do. I hear myself reading, praying,
“Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.”
Then I pray the Psalm in my own words:
When I swim in the lake with laughing daughters, you are there. When 27 of your daughters drown...
It’s hard to say “You are there.”
I say it anyway.
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I saw a video this morning of the girls who survived the Camp Mystic flood being driven away in a bus. You could see the wreckage out the windows, and I couldn’t help feeling like that was too much, like these precious children shouldn’t have to see that. But then I remembered they’d been in it, that, whatever comes, some bit of it will probably always be in them.
So much darkness. Enough to gobble a person whole.
Surely the darkness will hide them,
and the light around them will be night…2
I have the sound off on my phone, so it isn’t until I see a music note in the caption that I realize they’re singing. I turn up the volume. They sing, “The Lord of love has come to me…”
Even the darkness is not dark to you.
The night shines like the day.3
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Do they mean it? About the love of the Lord?
The girls on the bus?
…His faithful love endures forever…
The people in the pews at my church?
…His faithful love endures forever…
The poet who wrote the Psalm?
…His faithful love endures forever…
All of the people who for all of the years, in everything, everywhere,
saved in the river,4
drowned in the river,
chanting the chorus 26 times and then 26 times again?
…His faithful love endures forever…
Do they mean it?
I return to the simmering prayer on the back burner—it’s thickened, intensified. I’m ready to pray it.
I remember the laughter and the diving and the perfect day.
I remember the valley of the shadow of death.
I said, “all your breakers and your billows have swept over me.”5
I say, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.
His faithful love endures forever.”
-JL
This is the story I tell in The Happiest Saddest People season 1, an audio memoir about loss, grief, doubt, and my personal journey toward embracing the presence of God.
Psalm 139:11
Psalm 139:12
It’s worth a mention that hundreds of girls were saved from the flooding at Camp Mystic (750 girls attended last week’s session). One Coast Guard swimmer has been credited with saving 165 lives. 1700 people are currently helping with search and rescue.
Psalm 42:7
Thank you so much for echoing my thoughts. I also have two daughters and I have relieved putting them in the bus for summer Camp, my baby daughter not really wanting to go……I quickly thank God and pray for all
the families involved in Texas.
I recall the recent tragedies in Asheville and not being able to contact my daughter for days, not knowing how she was. And I quickly thank God & say a prayer. Thank you for reminding me that God is always there for us.
God bless you & yours, in Him,
Jeanette (Jan) Hill
Lots of love……🙏♥️🙏
His faithful love DOES endure forever.
These verses have gotten me through some pretty tough times. They are true.