The water started pouring into Debbie Dossey’s house so quickly that she didn’t know how it would end, but she did know one thing — she needed to change clothes.
“I decided I needed to go back in my closet and make myself appropriate for when we were found, discovered, whatever,” she said.
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It was around 3 a.m. on July 4 when the Guadalupe River in Texas’ Hill Country began rising in their home.
“Our little dog followed me in there (to the closet), and the water was ankle deep, and then it was thigh deep, and then it poured in so quickly our little dog was learning to swim for the first time,” she said.
Debbie scooped the dog up and put her on top of a floating piece of furniture.
“And then the Lord just brought this piece of furniture in for me to float on,” she said.
‘Lord, I just want to be faithful’
Her husband, Mike, was in the living room standing on his tiptoes until he realized that wasn’t going to be enough. The river was continuing to rise rapidly.
“I decided, ‘I know the kitchen counter is here somewhere,’ so I treaded water to it and crawled up on it and stood up, and when it was all said and done, it was chest deep standing on the kitchen counter,” he said.
The water got so high that it was over the top of the door frame. The two weren’t able to talk to each other anymore.
But Debbie said she never felt stress at all.
She said floating on that piece of furniture “was a seesaw for over an hour, but I was very thankful to have it, because I could hold on to the door facing.”
“I said, ‘Lord, I just want to be faithful and do things Your way so You’re glorified,’” Debbie said. “So if this is a test, You have a purpose for our lives, and I just want to glorify You through this.”
‘I believe God made a way’
She said the Holy Spirit began bringing Scriptures and songs to mind.
“I’m sitting here in perfect peace floating along … but we did reach a point where it was cold, and I was shaking so bad I was having a hard time holding on,” she said. “And I said, ‘Lord, I really feel like You’re saving us, that You have a purpose for our lives.’”
She asked Him to make the water recede. In the other room, Mike was doing the same thing. About five minutes later, they saw some ripples in the water, and it went down enough that they could talk again.
“And then the piece of furniture under me went down and I was able to touch the floor again,” Debbie said.
She and Mike realized at that point that two locked windows had opened around the time they started praying, letting the water out.
“I believe God made a way by making sure those windows opened,” Debbie said.
Recovering
She also believes he made a way through the piece of furniture that floated well enough to keep her safe.
“It was a precious inherited piece of furniture from my grandfather who had rescued this cabinet from the Cameron County Courthouse,” she said. “My grandfather rescued that in like the 1950s, but God planted the seeds for the trees that that cabinet was made from, probably in the late 1700s.”
God knew then that He would use that piece of furniture to save her life one day.
“It just was very profound for me thinking through that process and how the Lord was just pouring into me all these Scriptures and things,” she said. “It was another sense of peace and gratefulness for a grandfather I loved so much and lost at a very early age.”
Now, several months after the flood, Mike and Debbie — both members of Trinity Baptist in Kerrville, Texas — are recovering. Mike said at first he woke up every night at 3 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep, but that’s starting to get better now.
And Texans on Mission are now working to rebuild their home.
‘Humbling’
Debbie said it’s “extremely humbling to see how God is working and how He is pouring into us.”
She said there are “so many people who need to know the Lord and know that beauty comes from ashes.”
“We just have a great big wonderful God who is good all the time,” Debbie said. “Even in the middle of a flood, God is good. I can praise the Lord for every step of this process.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written from a video interview done by Marc Ira Hooks as part of Ground Level — Real People, Real Places, No Studio Required. To hear the Dosseys talk about how God is faithful through grief, click here. To walk with Debbie Dossey through her house and hear her story of surviving the flood by floating on a cabinet, click here.
