Texas. At one point in my life, it was a place I called home and therefore a place that will always be close to my heart. I arrived there from Minnesota, only 20 years old, afraid and alone, but engaged to a man I loved. A man whose legs were taken as a result of the war we face in Afghanistan. For the next two years, Texas would be the place where I’d start my marriage, witness my new husband learn to walk again using prosthetic legs and meet some of the best people I’d ever meet in my life. It’s a place that taught me to be proud of where you’re from, to never ever give up, to put God and prayer above all, and that everything is “bigger” in Texas.As I sit writing this, I glance up at the television screen. For several days it’s been streaming twenty-four hour live coverage of the horrific and catastrophic events happening across Texas. Hurricane Harvey hit Texas as a category four hurricane on Friday August 25th around 11pm EST.
With over 40” of rain across parts of Southeast Texas, wind speeds that reached up to 130mph, whole towns that are nearly flattened and life-threatening flooding, Harvey is going down in the history books as one of the most powerful and disastrous hurricanes ever. The rain across Texas hasn’t stopped in days, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents afraid, desperate and homeless. Still, there are over 2,000 residents requesting evacuation daily in just the Houston area alone.
Pray for Texas. Pray for those stranded, separated from their families, for those risking their lives to rescue others, for those who have experienced total loss, and ultimately for those who have become victims to Harveys power.
If there is one thing I learned from my time in Texas it’s that nothing is stronger or more powerful than Texans themselves. Texas will survive. Texas will recover. Texas will rebuild.
-written by Megan Zimmerman
photo credit: Alyssa Schukar for the New York Times
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