Our time in Texas has come to an end. Two weeks came and went as if I blinked. These trips to Texas always feel surreal – like a fleeting dream. It is impossible for me to explain even a fraction of what the experience was like. Every moment of the day is filled from morning to night with such things that leave you physically and mentally exhausted. It also forces you to wrestle with every human emotion, such as joy, fear, guilt, loss, and helplessness. As hard as it was to face, I know we all gained great strength from the difficulty of our task.
I am not an eloquent man. Try as I might, I cannot muster up the words to express how much this project means to me. To remedy this, I will shamelessly use the words of William Shakespeare from the Tempest.
Prospero:
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”
As I said last year, it isn’t over. It can’t be – there is still so much work that needs to be done. There are still people dying without a name. There are still families without a place to grieve. Everyday the hard working people of Texas are faced with this humanitarian crisis. So many of them work tirelessly to ameliorate the problem in any way that they can. I feel greatly honored just to have done my small part, and privileged to have done it by their side.