Flooded by Grace

So here was what the water looked like running down the street as I headed home this afternoon in response to "flash flood warnings" on my phone.

And here's what the water looked like standing about two inches deep in the study behind the garage. I didn't even know where to START ...

So I posted an SOS on Facebook ...

HELP! We're flash flooding in Altadena and I have a flooded study and if there's anybody in the Altadena area who could come help me I'm in desperate need of it. I don't even know where to start!

And within 20 minutes I had a team of Good Samaritans from All Saints Church and a staff member from Five Acres up the street helping move furniture, box up pictures and papers and shop-vac up the water off Louise's great-grandmother's Oriental rug.

Meanwhile, other Facebook friends were Googling "rug doctors" for me ... and found one who said they could be there in 30 minutes.

So the sodden rug got rolled up while the boxes got moved into the garage ...

And two hours later Louise's great-grandmother's  rug was on its way to the rug doctor, the electricity was turned back on and the fans were humming away drying out the room ... and I was feeling SO incredibly blessed to be surrounded by such an amazing village -- to be part of an authentic community.

Elizabeth Drescher taught me the term "multiplatform convergence" -- the ways our many communication platforms connect and converge to create community ... and today I got to experience that in a very tangible and powerful way as the "platforms" converged to provide prayers, support and elbow grease to come up around me in a moment of challenge and anxiety.

I went from being immobilized and feeling more alone than I have in any of the many moments of feeling alone since Louise's death to being inspired and feeling incredibly grateful for the grace of colleagues and community; for multiplatforms of communication and connection and for the abundant blessing of "those whose lives are closely linked to ours;" for being flooded by grace.