God Drives a Tow Truck (22 page)

I had wanted very much to publish the book with a secular publisher, but decided to peddle my book to the list of Christian agents that one very helpful agent sent me. I again received interest, but the Christian agents said even writers with a publishing track record were not getting deals now. I dissolved into tears a few times, reading what was by now, my rejection letter #200. But one agent’s response struck me, “It is a great book, but just too much of a long shot.”

I wrote back, “I serve a God who specializes in long-shots. Are you sure you don’t want to see a few chapters?”

The agent wrote back, “Send me the book.”

While that agent was looking at my dog story, I began to realize that God was speaking to me very strongly through this whole arduous and depressing process. He was teaching me a lesson about patience, diligence, faith, and especially perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. It was the same lesson that I had been learning with the rehabilitation of the vicious dog I’d rescued. It was one of the most important messages God gives in the Bible, that “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it…” and “fight the good fight, finish the race.”

I began to write a book about the many times in my life God had spoken through symbols and sometimes miracles. A flood of memories poured into my head and out my furiously typing fingers as I recounted my journey from atheist to believer and how God was leading me each day with countless reminders of His presence.

As long as I was growing practiced at writing to agents and handling rejection with such poise, I decided to query them about the second book. This one also received great interest, and the same dismal economic forecast that precluded the success of any new author.

A few agents showed great interest, but only if I could prove I could help market the book to tens of thousands of people. Since I had less than a dozen good friends, this did not seem possible, but I wrote back that I was sure I could do that. I began writing to all the groups of homeschoolers, and animal rescue organizations I belonged to, and soon had hundreds of thousands of potential book buying contacts. I started a blog, and realized I loved writing with a self imposed deadline every day, and found that
God always sent me a message, every day, like manna. Just enough heavenly insight to feed my blog viewers for a day.

After the first week I had almost six hundred page views on my blog, and after the second week, over a thousand. I received emails from strangers telling me how much encouragement they had received reading my blog, and thanking me.

Thanking me? I began to realize that the books may never be published. I may well run out of things to say on my blog…. but I believed I was being directed, and serving a purpose I had never envisioned or even intended. I serve a God of miracles, and sometimes what I want is not what He wants. He rarely lets me know what is in store for tomorrow, but He has faithfully sent me marching orders for today. With great anticipation, I eagerly wait, and listen very carefully.

My reach has exceeded my grasp, but it always does; it always has. If it didn’t I wouldn’t need God, but I do. I have a very short arm, but His is infinite, and mercifully gentle.

Chapter 34

The Flood

Hebrews 11: 1

¹
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

My brother John had had better days. While he was stuck in Atlanta, the mighty Susquehanna River reached record flood levels and in the middle of the night, surrounded his beautiful historic home in Owego, NY, trapping his wife and son inside. I had missed any mention of the horrible threat to my brother’s hometown. My book had finally been published and I was feverishly preparing for my first book signing.

So unknown by me, the flood was rising and filling his basement as John tried to book a flight into Binghamton. All flights were cancelled as my parents’ and John’s hometown went into a state of emergency, and the waters rose to the first floor of my brother's home. My parents, in a neighboring area, were safe, high atop a hill, but the cities of Binghamton, and Owego proper, on the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers, were inundated with flood waters. Even if my sister- in-law, Jenny, could get out of the house, all the streets out of Owego were flooded.
Midday, my brother texted me. The National Guard had arrived in a Zodiac boat, and rescued wife Jenny, son Anthony, and their sweet dog, Callie. They were then retrieved from the National Guard drop off site by friends. She, the dog, and her son were safely brought to the friend’s home near Owego, but swollen creeks cut off her path to get to my folks. My brother hoped to fly in the next day, when the airport reopened.

"Why didn't she leave when she had a chance?" I asked John.
"Because no one thought the river would flood that high," he told me.
That's what Noah's neighbors said too....
Warnings. They are all over the place, and we ignore them at our peril. I am not faulting Jenny. In the two hundred years that beautiful historic house had been standing, it had never flooded more than a few inches in the basement. She had no reason to suspect the river would engulf her home.

There are so many warnings in life that we ignore. They are sometimes little things, like sassy tones that creep into our children's voices. Sometimes they are little indulgences that are slowly not little anymore. The occasional cream jelly donut becomes the staple, and broccoli becomes the occasional treat. We go for a run rather than tackle that work we should be tackling...
just this once
...and
just this once
becomes commonplace. Rather than fill our lungs with healthy fresh air, and move the muscles God gave us, we slouch like slugs on the couch, because
today
we are too tired. We don't notice that
today
becomes tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and soon the muscles are as gooey as that jelly donut we are now eating in prodigious amounts. We ignore God's nudges to look up at Him, and open our hearts to His pleas, and when His image becomes fainter, we blame it on Him. Sarcasm and anger replace encouragement and gentleness. The rain begins to fall, and fall and fall for forty days and forty nights. We keep thinking it will stop, but it doesn't, and it floods the world. And as we grasp at the planks of our homes floating by, we wonder why we weren't warned.

John did make it safely into Binghamton, and was determined to find his family. His Jeep got him safely across the swollen creeks. He retrieved Jenny from the friend’s house, and they drove the few miles through a circuitous two hour route, trying to find their way back to their flooded home through the flooded streets. The emergency alert that no one be on the streets did not deter them. John had to see what had happened to his beloved home.

“We haven’t heard from him,” my parents told me when I called, “We think he flew in this morning, but all we know is every street in Owego is impassable. We don’t know where John is.”

I texted John’s cell phone. He answered immediately.

“We are at my house. The kitchen floor is ruined, and the electrical box and the furnace will need to be replaced.”
“Is that all?” I asked, “That is a miracle.”
“Yes.”

John brought Jenny back to the friend’s house and then he returned to his flooded home. There were reports of widespread looting. The National Guard patrol was increased.

“I am not waiting for the National Guard,” John told me.

My brother spent the night in his flooded town in his flooded home with a shotgun across his knees, watching for any looters that dared enter his home. There was no water, electricity, food service, or any service of
any
kind open in the devastated Owego/Binghamton NY flood zone. Into this vacuum, the looters came. John sat ready. He couldn't stop the flood, but he was determined to stop the looters.

“Don’t shoot to kill,” I begged him, “Just to maim.”
“I shoot and ask questions later. If the looters read my Facebook post, they know that.”
I worried about what his night must have been like. It was not inconceivable that in the midst of this horrible wound to his home, he might be unbalanced enough to shoot someone. What if he were shot instead? I waited anxiously to hear from him the next morning. It distressed me greatly that anyone would take advantage of others' troubles as to loot the remnants of horrendous loss. Ninety percent of the Owego businesses were flooded extensively. I couldn’t imagine how this town was going to rebuild.
My brother sent a newspaper photograph of an aerial view of flooded Owego the next morning. No streets were visible. It looked like Holland with canals of water crisscrossing the town, with trees growing out of the water. There was one patch, one small patch of dry grass in the whole city. The flood waters rose around all but that patch of grass. Half my brother's house sat on that small patch of dry ground. His house was the most fortunate house in all of Owego.
While the waters were rising, the river not yet crested, and John's wife, Jenny, and son Anthony, were trapped in the house, John had texted me.
"Now might be a good time to get on the God hotline," he had said.
"I'm on it," I texted back.
I had prayed and prayed, throughout the day, texting back and forth with my brother as the river rose. I prayed for the safety of John's family, and for his beautiful two hundred year old home. Finally, I received his text message that the river had crested. And that Jenny and Anthony had been rescued.
However, I worried that John might think God had let him down. The house had still flooded, at least part way up the first floor level.
Still,
his family was safe. I praised God for His deliverance. Not a single person had died in that overwhelming flood.

I gazed at the startling photograph of Owego underwater, with that single patch of grass beside my brother's house. Later, I learned another remarkable part of the story. Jenny had been rescued because of that little patch of dry ground. She had been able to walk across that single patch of dry ground between the rising waters, to the public phone in a business on the other side of the grass. From there, she called the authorities. Every road was flooded. Owego was trapped in the water. NO vehicle could drive to save her. The National Guard was alerted, and John's family was rescued by boat. I couldn't stop looking at that patch of grass, and thinking if
that
isn't an answer to prayer, I don't know what is.
"But what about the other people?" asked Asherel, when I told her the story.
Yes, I had thought of the other people. They weren't given a patch of grass. But everyone in Owego was safe, and there was much to be thankful for in that alone.
"I should have prayed more fervently for the whole city," I said, "I was so focused on praying for John's family..."

John told me much later that he had never doubted God. He said that as he boarded the plane to Atlanta, before the flood, he had been worried about much needed repairs to the old house. How would he afford to replace the sagging floor, and what kind of structural damage was involved? Then the flood came. He remembered I had told him God always answers prayers, though not as we always hope or expect. He knew I was praying for him. He felt an assurance that God knows best, even though at times, it sure doesn’t seem that way.

The flood rose one quarter inch above the first floor level. Had it been ¼ inch lower, insurance would not have paid for the repairs. Had it been ¼ inch higher, he would have had to rip out and replace all the walls. They would have been out of the house for a year, instead of the brief two weeks they could not live in it. The flood had risen to the exact perfect height to make the needed repairs to John’s house that he had worried he would be unable to afford on his own.
It is not that I think my prayers direct God, nor that they even influence God. But we
are
told to pray "without ceasing", and I do believe that obedience in prayer brings blessing. It may not bring the answers we long for, but there is
always
blessing in prayer. And if everyone would bow their head in prayer, they would have no time to loot, or blow up buildings...
When surrounded by a flood of trouble, sometimes the only way to wade through the grief is to look for that one patch of dry ground. The waters do eventually recede, and flood plains have the richest soil of all to start anew