Tossing Buckets
When it comes to doing our part, every drop helps.
By Shelagh Hardern
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It was about six months after Hurricane Katrina and we were on our final day of relief work with the Evangelical Free Church of America down in New Orleans. We’d spent a long week labouring in the hot sun, first roofing and then “mucking” houses–which essentially means shoveling the entire water and sewage-soaked contents of a person’s home out into the street.
We were working in the Ninth Ward, at St. Bernard’s Perish, one of the areas hardest hit by the levee break. Homes had been pushed off their foundations and into the street; the waste water level had reached the second floor. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) markings, spray painted on homes, indicated where bodies had been found.
Needless to say, we were worn out. We had given and loved and offered hope and now we found ourselves sitting in the gravel parking lot of the church, trying to muster the strength to go back out there and give it one more go. We were only a few weeks from the beginning of the next hurricane season and everything was still a mess. The work we had done could essentially be for nothing. It all seemed pointless.
”If God asks you to throw a bucket of water in the ocean, you better well do it.”
Those were Danni’s words as she pulled herself up and hopped into the van. The team took their cue from her and with those words, we were on our way to go out and face it again.
That was five years ago but those words are still a huge part of my story. Since then, I’ve been more places and seen more things. I’ve exhausted my compassionate heart more times than I can count. I’ve tossed a lot of buckets. Big buckets, little pails and barrels I’ve carried with the help of friends.
As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
So, does it make a difference?
That’s not up to me.
If you’ve ever owned a pool or a hot tub, or even a salt water fish tank, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the intricate balancing of the PH level. Little drops to try to create the right environment for life. And yet we trust the science of it. So why do I hesitate when it’s a bucket and an ocean?
I like the way it was said by one of my fellow SheLoves contributors, “It’s like spitting on a forest fire.” Because it’s not just about the futility of the the thing, but the danger. It’s about getting close enough to it to possibly get hurt. It’s about allowing yourself to be vulnerable for the sake of another. Or several others. I don’t know about you ladies, but my spitting range is not that great, so that means getting quite close … and I’m okay with that.
Facing Giants
When I get discouraged I like to watch the Kendrick brothers film “Facing the Giants.” I’ve probably seen it a hundred times now and my heart still races at the same moments; I still cry at the same parts. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. If you have, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. The death crawl.
“Four more downs.”
“I will still love you.”
As time goes on, I catch myself saying it more and more.
The other day, coming back from my parents’ house on the Sunshine Coast, we were standing on the upper deck of the ferry bracing for the reality that always awaits us on shore, and I went on one of those longwinded six-year-old rants of imagination. You know, the ones where sentences aren’t separated by periods but a succession of “and thens” and by the time your done you’re so lost in the possibility of it all that you have to click your heels three times to bring yourself back again.
At the end of it I just smiled and sighed and said: “I guess it’s like throwing a bucket.”
That’s where I find myself now, standing on the shore, holding the bucket, getting ready to toss it out there.
(Image credit: Pinterest)
