Rising Waters

I've seen amazing sights these past few days. Neighbors helping neighbors. Strangers helping strangers. People straining their arms and backs to fill and haul millions of heavy sandbags. Workplaces asking their employees to leave to help the flood effort.  Entire cities coming together for the betterment of the community to help protect hundreds of homes, schools, and churches in Bismarck-Mandan.

We're learning a valuable lesson that you may be able to dam a river, but you can never truly tame it. Living next to the Missouri is like having a pet tiger - fun and exotic, but still a tiger.  Even for people like myself who live outside of the flood zone, everyone has friends, family, co-workers who are scheduled to be underwater next week and are plugging drains, moving furniture, and building dikes.  While helping the effort, I tell myself, "It's just stuff, no one is going to die from this, in the big picture it really doesn't matter."  But it's hard to say that to a family I've known for half of my 30 years while packing up their family photo albums, a swirling river just yards away and creeping ever closer.

However, seeing everyone come together during the impending flood, I've never been more proud to be part of this community, and I'm certain we're going to come out of this stronger than ever with (I hope) a renewed respect for the life-giving river that sustains us.

The spillway gates at the dam were opened this morning. In the next 36 hours, we'll see if all our work will hold back the rising waters.