Jan 15, 2011

I can see clearly now......

The fuz has gone..
I can see all obstacles in my way...
>BUMP<  "OW!"
So I have my new glasses. And while they are so CLEAR with no fuzzy bits right in the middle, they are a different prescription and are taking a bit of getting used to. Things look a little wacky.
To get to the shopping center where my glasses were, we had to drive through some areas that were badly affected by the floods. It is so heartbreaking seeing peoples whole lives in a brown muddy pile on the sidewalk. Everything is covered in brown. Everything is brown, the grass, the trees, the houses, all the contents of the houses. And the smell! Its just aweful! I was completely blown away at just how much water some of these areas had. I mean I saw trees that were 20 meters high that were covered in this muddy slush. To drive past someones house, and you can see the water was way over your car, way over the roofs of these houses, is just eerie, and frightening.
I cant get one story out of my head. One man who lived in a small town below Toowoomba (the town who suffered that horrible flash inland tsunami wave) has lost his wife and two of his children. They were caught in the freak wave. They all jumped into the cab of his rual fire brigade truck but the wave was too big and flipped the truck over. The man managed to throw one boy up into a tree and before he could get the others out he was swept away. Sadly the wife and the other two children were trapped in the truck and drowned. The man was able to climb up into a tree a few yards away. So with his one remaining son in one tree and him in the other, they had to sit there for 8 hours before they were rescued. They kept each other going by calling out to each other, the man urging his boy to "just hold on". The boy could see into the windscreen of the truck and kept asking his dad where his mum was. The man prayed for it to get dark so that the boy could not see the truck any more.
How do you come back from something like that?
These people were an ordinary family. But they were much more than that. Just the night before the wife had helped rescue a lady who had stupidly disobeyed signs and drove into the flood water. And the husband had just spent hours rescuing more people from the floods.
It's just not fair.
I feel so lucky and blessed.

11 comments:

  1. I can see that your clear vision has also extended to your heart. You can clearly see the unfairness of this situation and the superiority of the helping heart. I'm going to be continually sending good thoughts and prayers to people affected by this terrible situation...My heart sees it clearly too, with a clear hope of better things coming in the future.

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  2. @ Ruth I know:(
    @Poetess Thankyou. These people need all the good will they can get.

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  3. Oh and also we donated money to the flood appeal, AND we are going to give all of the things we had saved for ebay or garage sales to any people who need it. We don't feel right keeping all this for ourselves when people don't have anything.

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  4. Wow, how heartbreaking. I can't even imagine having to tell my little boy that.

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  5. @Paul.. I know. Where do you begin?

    @dbs I can't stop just shaking my head in disbelief.

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  6. simply awful...I feel so bad. It is shocking all of the devastation that has happened.

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  7. @Caren I know. To see it first hand makes it even worse.

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  8. Truly no words. Just sadness. I've been on the disaster relief site and think what you're doing is wonderful.

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  9. @A&G I agree. Well we feel so lucky that it only seems right to pitch in and help in any way we can.

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I'd love to hear what you have to say :)