If it floods…
you will have a story.
Hopefully a fierce, unforgettable story to share for the rest of your life.

You will tell this story till you are old and gray, and then you will tell it even more because older people love stories.

Oma and Opa nearly lost their lives after a Pineapple Express storm blew out a levee near their Yuba City homes on Christmas Eve night 1955. I’ve heard my parents’ flood stories a thousand times, and I never tire of them. Opa was lucky not to drown as the flood waters rushed through the darkness toward his house. His family barely made it out of the flood plain alive.

Stuck in a line of cars headed for high ground, Oma’s family just missed being washed away on the road where others perished in the floodwaters. Fortunately, Oma’s family made it to Sutter, and camped on a relative’s back porch for days. “We kids had the best time on that porch,” says Oma now, her eyes shining with her flood memories.

Both my parents’ childhood homes were inundated in the 1955 flood, but Oma and Opa hardly remember the devastation and the cleanup afterwards. What they recall is the adventure of it all and both still speak fondly of that disaster over sixty years ago. My parents also live on high ground in the Sutter Buttes now, so that tells you something.

In 1986, when I was 18, another Pineapple Express overwhelmed the rivers and flooded our only mall outside of Marysville in Linda. My friend working at JCPenney was airlifted off the roof and the mall never recovered. Scott and I’d been dating for a month when this happened. Chased from his Yuba College apartment by the floodwaters, Scott ended up in the Sutter Buttes with us, and stayed for three weeks. School was cancelled for both of us. I was a senior in high school. We listened to Meat Loaf, The Eagles, and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band in my bedroom, both of us preferring 70s music over 80s songs. We went on hikes in the buttes when it wasn’t raining. Watched a lot of movies on my parents’ VCR. And at the end of Scott’s stay, I was ready to marry him. That flood sealed our young love.

Wet and windy 1997 brought more flooding to California. Scott, an Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot with the California National Guard, searched the floodwaters for survivors while I huddled in my parents’ house on their hill in the Sutter Buttes with 55 evacuated Yuba City friends and family members and some thirty disoriented dogs that would not stop barking.

During the disaster, I discovered I was pregnant with our third child. When I told Scott over the phone we were expecting, he replied, “I saw a cow on a roof today.” That was the end of our pregnancy talk. People and animals were swimming in the valley. I didn’t see Scott for a month until the floodwaters receded, and then we met in a Sacramento parking lot, kissed for a few minutes, and he went back to his helicopter while I waited for him to come to our hotel room that night. Then Scott kept flying around our flooded state for about another month and I went home to grow our baby.

I know the raging rivers around us are scary right now. Flooded roads are dangerous, and coming out of a drought, Californians aren’t used to all this rain. But do your best to hold onto your sense of humor and keep saying your prayers for God to keep you safe.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.

Isaiah 43:2. Whisper this promise to yourself. God will never let you down. The wind and waves still know his name, Jesus!

As an author of stories, I’m here to tell you your journey should have these epic moments. You won’t know what you’re made of in the sunshine of your life, but during a storm you’ll find out who you really are, and more importantly, who God really is to you.

I want to share with you the story of a dog rescued from a roof during the 1997 flood. The helicopter pilot Michael Kidd along with photographer Ron Middlekauff became a part of this story when they reached out to save that border collie named “Rodeo” from the rooftop of his home.

Twenty years later, the 1997 flood waters are long gone, but the story lives on in the hearts and minds of the people who watched it unfold that day. I was one of those people gathered around a box TV set with fifty other people in my parents living room in the Sutter Buttes, praying someone would rescue that poor dog. Scott knew the pilot, Michael Kidd because he was military too. This guy who risked his life to save a doomed collie during a flood. Now that’s a story to remember.