Every time I open my phone, there’s a new post about the Texas tragedy—and every time, I am a sobbing mess. I don’t know these families, but I feel it in my bones. The weight of it is just… sitting on me. I can’t scroll past it. Can’t shake it. I think of my girls. I picture the parents. And I find myself praying and crying in the same breath.
We just got our own babes back from summer camp a few weeks ago. The week leading up to drop-off always carries this air of… whatever you’d call that space between anxiety and nerves, even if neither one of the girls or I say it out loud. A whole week of unknowns and being apart while doing it. But camp is their happy place—just like it is for so many of us. We send our kids because it lights them up. Because they come home a little braver, a little freer, a little more themselves. And we do it all knowing we can’t bubble-wrap the world, but we still try to give them every bit of joy it holds.
And maybe that’s why I still slip handwritten “open when…” letters into their trunks. Specific to each girl. Because even in the joy, I still want to be there—in some small way. Hoping my words land exactly where they need to—like a soft place to fall if the homesickness creeps in.
For example, for Novi, I wrote:
“Open on the first night.”
Inside is just the handwritten lyrics to the mashup lullaby I’ve sung since they were babies. Part hymn. Part Greatest Showman. Part whispered prayer:
As I went down to the river to pray… Good Lord, show me the way.
Good Lord, show us the way..
I don’t think it’s far off, when horrific tragedies happen, to question everything. Honestly, I think it would be weird not to. It’s the most human thing we can do. We are wired to need answers—to look for logic, for comfort, for something to hold in the middle of brokenness.
And sometimes, those answers just don’t come. Or they do—and they fall flat. They don’t fix anything or put air back in our lungs.
When I was 21, my best friend and roommate went to work as a liftie and just like every morning she took the lift to the top for her ski break—she had a horrible fall and was killed. I couldn’t go home—I didn’t even know where to go—so I ended up at the local coffee shop, numb and shattered. I didn’t even call anyone. But my pastor showed up anyway. He sat across from me in the quiet, and I asked him the same question so many of us are asking again right now:
Why, God?
He told me I was asking the wrong W.
“Even if you get your why, it won’t satisfy you,” he said. “It’ll just open up more questions.
Instead, ask Who—Who are You, God? Who are You in this?”
I didn’t get answers. There was no neatly wrapped revelation that made it all make sense. I still can’t find a reason for any of it. But I did get presence. In my wailing and wreckage, God didn’t give me a reason—He gave me Himself. And somehow, that was enough.
There’s an old song I’ve clung to ever since:
When you don’t understand,
When you don’t see His plan,
When you can’t trace His hand…
Trust His heart.
I don’t know the why. But I do know this:
God is still good.
When the headlines hit too close…
When I look at my girls and feel that familiar lump rise in my throat…
When just imagining the worst makes it hard to breathe—
There’s no reason that could ever be enough.
But there is a Who.
This is the part of motherhood no one prepares you for.
The part where someone else’s child is gone, and you hold your own closer—angry, grateful, scared, wrecked, all at once.
Even when it’s not our child—
It could be.
The line between “mine” and “hers” starts to blur.
Because I am her. And she is me
We’re the ones who pack the lunches.
Tape name labels onto water bottles.
We fold the shirts, pack the sunscreen, and tuck the stuffed animal in last.
We slip notes between the socks and prayers beneath their pillows.
We sing them to sleep.
Track their location.
Hold our breath when they don’t text back.
Because we know—
This is what it means to love them.
To carry joy and fear in the same breath.
To prepare them to go.
And still ache when they’re gone.
To send them out with our hands,
And hold them with our hearts the whole time.
Ask any parent their greatest fear,
And I bet our answers are all the same:
The unimaginable happening to our kids.
Except… we’ve all imagined it.
And just the thought alone is knee-buckling.
Of course I love my husband—
But there’s an unspoken understanding there.
One day, one of us will grieve the other.
That’s part of the deal.
But it’s not supposed to happen to our daughters.
Our sons.
So when we hear about a parent losing a child—
In any capacity—our hearts shatter with them.
We can’t possibly know… but somehow, we do.
We’re tethered by this invisible thread:
The unbearable love we carry,
And the unbearable loss we pray we never meet.
Because when one of us is gutted that way—
we all feel the bleed.
We’ve all stood at the edge of that fear.
We’ve all pictured the unthinkable.
We’ve all lain awake at 2 a.m.,
imagining the call, the knock, the agony
So when it happens to her—
it breaks something in all of us.
We don’t get the why.
But when there are no words left—
We open our hands.
We storm the gates.
We beg Heaven to break through.
And this is where we meet each other.
In the river.
In the ache.
In the hands raised and hearts split open.
Still choosing to trust His heart.
Because there may never be an answer that’s enough.
But there is a Who.
And He is near to the brokenhearted.
Show us WHO you are.
O mothers let’s go down,
Let’s go down, come on down…
Down in the river to pray.
Ways to Help
If your heart is heavy too and you’re wondering how to help, here’s one place to start:
➤ Donate to TEXSAR’s July 4 Texas Flood Response
Your support goes directly to volunteer-led search, rescue, and disaster relief efforts across Texas—where families are reeling, grieving, and rebuilding after catastrophic flash flooding.
And if all you can do is pray—do that.
The Wilds Project. 
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