Waiting...

I woke up to a chilling news today. Typhoon (Ondoy) hit my home country (Philippines) in such rage and fury unequalled for the last several years. As of this writing, death toll is continually rising as rescuers began to reach submerged places, thousands more were rendered homeless and injured.

The images on tv and you tube were truly heart-wrenching: a couple whisked away by a sudden gush of water, a man desperately holding on to a coconut branch hanging loose from the trunk, cars tumbling against each other in the midst of the flood, rescuers braving the cold and the rains to bring people stranded in a roof down to a safer area, a mother and child walking from roof to roof, trying to maintain their balance lest they tumble towards the neck-deep waters below.

As I started watching the searing images, my vision started to blur and my lips became numb in anguish. My sister and her family live in Marikina – the city that was hardest hit by the typhoon. Fatalities continue to be reported round the clock. Since her place is located right in the middle of the city – I knew they could be right into the center of the flood. What if ......what if?

It is so debilitating to watch something happening right before your eyes but you are helpless to do anything about it. The feeling was beyond description –the knowledge that they are out there in the flood – helpless, hungry, cold – and there’s nothing I can do about it.

As usual, I had to turn to my greatest SOURCE of comfort, my greatest HELP in moments like this.

But even as I said my word of prayer, I wished I could go back to sleep and realize that this was all but a DREAM.