Dr. Christi Myers, professor of counseling in the Townsend Institute, was among the first disaster mental health professionals to arrive at the site of this summer’s catastrophic floods in rural Texas. Providing service through the American Red Cross challenged and inspired her to become involved further in disaster work, and to train her Concordia students in this specialized area, too.
“I’ve always prayed for the courage to show up when things are hard,” Myers shares. “In disaster work, I see it as sacred space — to stand with people when their world has been shaken and to walk alongside them through it. That’s an incredible honor.”
Myers and her husband live in San Antonio, an hour south of where the worst flooding took place. She has been a faculty member for five years in the Townsend Institute’s Master of Arts program in Counseling and PhD program in Counselor Education and Supervision, teaching counseling theories, supervision, internships, and, in the PhD program, advanced multicultural skills and research courses.
She also co-leads, with fellow Townsend Institute assistant professor Rachel McCormick, mission trips each semester to a small village in Belize with Townsend Institute students. There, they give mental health support to students and teachers in local schools.
But the situation that developed on July 4, 2025, was well beyond Myers’ typical assignment.
Early that morning, as she was helping set up for a race she intended to run in San Antonio, her husband, a soldier in the U.S. Army, called to say he was being deployed to help search and rescue along the Guadalupe River. This popular camping and RV spot in central Texas had been hit by catastrophic flash flooding beginning at 4 a.m., and with waters cresting at 39 feet before receding, many along its banks were missing. Among the victims, it would be discovered, were at least 135 people, including 27 young people from Camp Mystic.
An hour later, Myers received a notice that Red Cross disaster mental health volunteers were needed as well. She skipped the race, ran home to gather supplies, and was in the Red Cross’s first team to enter the disaster area that afternoon.
Myers had volunteered with the Red Cross since high school, providing emergency shelter, food, and water in the aftermath of hurricanes and other natural events. She had earned disaster mental health certification with the organization, and her appreciation for crisis work stemmed from her childhood. Raised by a father who was a mortician, she observed his empathy and compassion while helping people through some of their darkest days.
“Dad felt this was his vocation,” she says. “I watched him carry those emotions with such grace. My parents have always viewed it as an honor — and I do too — to sit with people in their darkest moments. That was really the catalyst for my desire to walk alongside people in pain.”
Riding in a small convoy of Red Cross trucks carrying medical supplies and recovery items such as tarps, shovels, and rakes, Myers and a team entered the hardest-hit area, which was still reeling from events. She knew the area well, having run trails and hiked there frequently, but now the scene was unrecognizable.
“Houses were gone, all the cabins were gone. RVs had been washed down the river,” Myers says. “All these huge cypress trees were uprooted and displaced. All the roads were torn up from flooding.”
Across the muddy landscape, survivors roamed, calling the names of missing loved ones. Blackhawk helicopters hovered overhead to drop rescuers into the scene and conduct searches from the air. Police officers put boats in the water and, with the help of dogs, searched for those still living.
“Time was of the essence,” Myers says. “They were pulling people out.”
The river had returned to a normal level, and the bright, sunny weather belied the horror that had just taken place. Myers calls the contrast “surreal.”
Her job, and that of her team, was to establish a stable presence and provide people with comfort and physical items of immediate need. They drove up and down the river banks, finding people to serve, jumping out of the truck to provide aid, then jumping back in and moving on.
“Our first interaction was to hand them something tangible and tell them ways we could support them,” she says. “I told them, ‘I’m Christi with the Red Cross. I’m with mental health. We’re out here checking on people’s physical and emotional needs. Can we help you in any way?’”
On the first day, they assisted fifty people. She drove home that night for fitful sleep and returned the next day, a routine she would follow at a sprinter’s pace for nearly a month. Her husband, also working long shifts, slept on-site.
It was Myers’ first mass-casualty deployment, and her job, in a phrase, was to “listen and link.”
“In those moments, our role is to offer compassion, bring comfort, and remind people they are not alone,” she says. “We model a service rooted in Christ’s love. It isn’t traditional therapy — it’s about helping individuals feel safe, listening deeply to their stories, identifying stress reactions, and connecting them with community providers who can support them long-term.”
One of the more difficult things was to encounter people who had come across terrible scenes while searching for lost loved ones. Some survivors returned daily to keep searching. Myers regularly visited a list of people who had chosen to shelter in the disaster area, some of them living in partially destroyed homes.
Within two weeks, the nature of the needs changed from immediate rescue to the desire for counseling and long-term assistance. At Red Cross reunification centers in the nearby town, people came looking for medical or psychological support. Myers and others set up counseling centers in the centers.
“A week or two after the disaster, they were no longer in survival mode and were able to articulate how they were feeling,” she says. “They had been able to process some emotions on their own and needed help to process more.”
Responses ranged from “absolute numbing” to hyper-vigilance, sadness, and anger. Volunteers like Myers, too, had to work through their own reactions to seeing tragedy up close.
“I rely a lot on my training for how to respond, but you are also in a disaster yourself,” Myers says. “We were processing with each other back in the car on the drive home and at headquarters. This was devastating for everybody. We were checking in on everybody’s emotional needs and how we could hang in there the next month.”
Colleagues from the Townsend Institute played a big part in her own wellness and resilience. Mark Newmeyer, a fellow professor, had experienced a mass-casualty event years prior and “was incredibly instrumental throughout this process, to talk to about spiritual concerns I was having,” says Myers. “He was able to mentor, guide, pray for me, and shepherd me through this process.”
Many fellow faculty and staff members regularly checked in on Myers and continued processing with her afterwards about the devastation she had seen and the sense of loss.
“Whenever there are children involved, it’s always going to be so difficult,” Myers says. “Working with families that are still looking for their children or have just been told they were recovered is always a challenge, but I felt honored to be able to sit beside them in those times.”
Townsend Institute Counseling Program Director Matthew Paylo says Myers has “high-level professional competency, warmth, and a collaborative spirit” that make her “an exceptionally respected faculty member.”
“She is deeply dedicated to the mission of Concordia, to do all she can to love and serve those around her,” he says. “Her work with the Red Cross speaks to servant-leadership in action. It speaks volumes to me and challenges me to reach out in my own community.”
When it was over, regular sleep and normal life slowly returned.
“The unfolding of the day was constantly in mind, and you were amped when you got home,” she says. “That eventually leveled out.”
She and her husband found it helpful to give each other plenty of space while recovering.
“Both of us needed our own processes to happen before we talked to each other about our experiences,” she says. “It took a couple of weeks. It was very emotionally challenging.”
But Myers emerged from the catastrophe with a strong desire to engage in more disaster mental health work.
“I had such a sense of purpose when I was in those situations,” she says. “I felt very much aligned and stepping into my calling while I was there. Going through it and recounting the experiences was really deep-seated in terms of purpose. I would love more experience in it.”
She also hopes to create opportunities such as workshops, trainings, and maybe a course in disaster mental health for students in the Townsend Institute, to equip them to offer hope in similar circumstances.
“Disaster mental health is a way I get to live out my calling,” she says. “I’m most proud of being able to remain present in that moment when people’s lives were absolutely falling apart.”