July 5, 2025
Dear Friends and Followers:
By now, most of you will have seen reports regarding the flash flooding in the Texas Hill Country. Some of you may recall that Deborah and I live in Kerrville, one of the communities devastated by the rising waters. Many of you have expressed concerns about our safety, which we appreciate more than you know.
Short answer: we are safe and dry. Our house is far from the river and on high ground. We even have power, which as many as two thousand of our neighbors do not. In the face of so much devastation, I feel more than a little guilty telling you we experienced no inconvenience whatever. Some might suggest that we were lucky. Yet, we prefer to believe that a loving and living God sheltered us in His grace.
If you have prayers to offer, dispatch them on behalf of Texans whose lives the rushing waters have shattered. Occasionally, words that you’ve written strike you with the force of a cannon ball. This is a passage from Texian Exodus: The Runaway Scrape and its Enduring Legacy:
“Citizens of the Lone Star State are famed for their resilience. Texas is a hard place in which to live. It is possessed of a mighty sumptuousness, but there’s nothing effortless, nothing congenial about it. Incongruously, the people are friendly; the land and the climate are not. It’s sons and daughters have weathered hurricanes, tornados, flash floods, droughts, epidemics, rattlesnakes, mosquitos, ticks, feral hogs, cedar fever, and even the ‘Snowpocalypse’ of 2021.’”
In the following days and weeks, the full toll of the Independence Day flood will reveal itself. Authorities have already confirmed as many as twenty-four fatalities. Many more are missing. Nevertheless, this ain’t our first rodeo. Texas—and Texans—will abide. Our history teaches us how to do it.
I love you all,
Steve