(Photo Credit: Eva Cranford)
The word “earthquake” has never held much meaning to me; it has always been something that you learn about in elementary school around the same time you make a model volcano with vinegar and baking soda. I guess sometimes I heard about them through musty, old history books that made me fall asleep every time I opened them or through some man in a suit on the news talking about far away places that I never knew what they looked like before the pictures of rubble. I have lived in the midwest of the United States my entire life- where the ground is often covered in snow, but it never, ever rumbles and cracks under your feet.
That all changed last month on April, 25th when I learned that Nepal was devastated by a huge earthquake. I was in India walking down a busy city street when a squad mate from another team pulled me aside and asked if I heard the news: “It was bad” she said, “the news said that thousands have lost their lives.”
We were supposed to go to Nepal next- in only a few days in fact. I kept thinking, “That could have been us- it was so close to being us!”
I thought for sure that we wouldn’t be able to go to Nepal anymore, but we found out at debrief that we would be after all. I had mixed feelings; I knew we would be seeing some really difficult things, but I also was so excited to help in an area that so clearly needed all sorts of help- to be the hands and hope of the Lord to these devastated people. And so we went! Everything went on like normal- well, as normal as world race life gets.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the city we were living in was not obliterated like the news stories had shown. People were picking back up the routines of their lives- stores were open, the streets bustled with traffic, dogs played outside our home, and children looked at us curiously. Of course there was evidence of what had happened: damaged buildings, rubble piles, tarp tent cities in any grassy or open area, and the stories of broken families from the everyday people I came into contact with such as store owners and taxi drivers.
I saw all of this and I thought I felt for them, I thought I truly cared, but I had no idea.
I stayed behind with one other squad mate, Amy, as the rest of the squad filed onto a bus headed into a village hours away to stay for the week to help rebuild as it was in one of the hardest hit areas in Nepal. I was very sick and not physically able to make the trip, but was still annoyed that I had to stay behind while everyone else got to do cool things. On Tuesday morning I was laying on the bottom floor of the house on my sleeping pad watching “Enchanted” on my laptop, trying to distract myself from how crappy I felt. I had already planned in my head how my day was going to go: finish the movie, make pasta for lunch, read my bible, and then take a nap and see where the rest of the evening takes me. I never got to do any of that-
The earth began to rumble and shake underneath my body.
It took me less than a second to realize what was happening because it was so violent. Amy and I made eye contact and then without speaking we made the decision to do the only thing we had ever heard about what to do in an earthquake: get out of the building and fast! We catapulted through the room and I slammed my feet into my shoes on the way out of the door while she ran out barefoot behind me because it was taking her too long to find them. We were tossed around, stumbling into walls and hardly making it through the doorframe.
The noises were awful. I could heard the blood pounding in my ears, but I could also hear screams of terror and the rumble of the ground beneath me.
We somehow got out of the house, out of the gate, and then stood in the street clutching each other as we watched the panic around us. We couldn’t even stand the ground was moving so much and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I watched a sobbing man carrying a newborn in one arm stumble out his gate as bricks fell from his house, I watched a motorcyclist ditch his bike and try to sprint away, I watched an old woman stumble to her knees as a family member desperately tried to drag her. I watched trying to see what to do next, but only saw blind terror and panic as everyone attempted to sprint in different directions.
There was nowhere safe, there was nowhere to escape because the very ground was crumbling.
It seemed to last forever. When it finally stopped, the screaming and panic didn’t. We were still in the middle of the street just holding each other for a bit before we were forced to move because of the motorcycles racing through. We were alive, but my first thought was for my squad: what had happened to them in that village that was the most devastated in the first quake? We decided to quickly run back into the house just to get the cell phone and for Amy to grab her shoes. We jogged up to the door, hearts still pounding and hands shaking only to find the thing that made whatever hope I had left drain down to my toes:
The door was locked.
We were alone. We had only the clothes we were wearing which consisted of skimpy items since it was just what we were lounging around in and Amy didn’t even have shoes on. There was no way that we could get into the building, we didn’t know the neighbors, the streets were filled with chaos and panic, we had no food, no water, no money, and no means of communication. We didn’t even have phone numbers because it was saved in our phone which was locked in the house.
Being separated from the squad was horrifying; I had no idea if those 50 people who had become my family over the last 5 months were dead or alive. I had shared my deepest secrets with those people, they had held me while I cried, we had prayed big prayers and seen them answered in mind-blowing ways, we had laughed until the tears streamed down and muscles were pulled. I had spent every minute alongside these people who had started out as strangers and become a giant, crazy family. We had already been through so much side-by-side and I felt like I was breaking apart even entertaining the thought that I might not see them again. I could only think of the tired hugs I gave a few as they meandered out the door the last time I saw them: I was thankful I said I loved them.
And so with heavy hearts and nothing else to do, Amy and I walked to see if we could find a contact who was 20 minutes away. He was our last hope- without him we would have to fend for ourselves in this crumbling city of strangers in a foreign country. We walked hand in hand, picking our way slowly through the narrow streets because of bare feet and prayed aloud trying not to think too much.
“Earthquake” no longer was something that was far from me, only in books and movies, but in 30 seconds had become a part of my story. “Earthquake” now was the screams of the Nepali people, the crumbling homes, the rumbling and groaning, the loss of control, the helplessness, and the feeling of being so alone in a very big world. This world race was supposed to show me the reality of how big our world is and just how small my world was. I wanted to see, I wanted to experience, I wanted to feel and walk alongside people and to know the truth of what it means to be human. All at once I no longer wanted to understand, but just wanted to be cradled by my heavenly Father and told that one day it will all be okay again.
Sometimes God asks you to read His Bible and to trust that He has the power to move the mountains, but other times He forces you to your knees by shaking the earth so that you can watch His mountains crumble and finally understand.
{TO BE CONTINUED}
Read my next blog post to hear the rest of my experience and what the Lord has shown me through all of this!
