We finally slept. It was a grateful sleep. Sleep made tender by the relief that the battle against the water and sorrowful for the tens of thousands of our neighbors in Texas and Louisiana who are less fortunate than we.

As we watch the outpouring of support on the television we feel relief and the emotional tug of wanting to help too. I remind myself that being out of the way is one way of helping. It is not much but as tired as we are we could create problems.

My dear hubby went out to check on our Aunt who is safe at her assisted living facility. He reported seeing places free of water and places just across the way from them underwater. Being from the mountains I had never been sensitive to how such small changes of elevation, inches literally, can turn the flow of water. Everything looks different to my eyes now.

It reminds me of the monsoons that followed our fire in the desert in October 2012.

I know from experience that changing worldviews is one of the outcomes of being in a natural disaster. The lenses through which I view the world, both of the mind and the heart, were tempered by fire. This time they are tempered by water.