Katrina & Me

[Author’s note:  This essay was originally written in November of 2006, fifteen months after Hurricane Katrina hit The Gulf Coast.  I read it at my church on December 3rd of that year.] 

Believe it or not, ten months ago today I got a phone call from my stepfather.  Just about eleven o’clock at night.  Turns out my uncle had passed away.

Three weeks later, I got an e-mail from the pastor of another church.  He told me that a friend of mine, just twenty-eight years old, committed suicide.

And then on March 15th, my birthday, my grandmother.

Now, I certainly met my share of “miserable comforters,” but it wasn’t long before I realized my own life had become something of a microcosm of The Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.  And fortunately Pastor Warner was wise enough, and nice enough, to warn me not to get too comfortable in my grief.  So I went to Mississippi.

One night before dinner I met a man named Kevin while we were washing our hands.  He is about my age.  His house was five blocks from the current campsite.  Of the…roughly the 1,800 people who lost their lives during Hurricane Katrina, Kevin knew…35 of them.  His friends, his family, his fiancee, and…their unborn child are all dead.  He also lost his home and his business.

I lost three people in six weeks, but Kevin lost 35 people in eight hours.

Do not misunderstand.  I don’t feel better just because I met a man who lost ten times what I did.  I feel great because “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  And God is The Great Blacksmith.

Today, Kevin says that his faith in God is “questionable.”

Questionable in a place with people like Jenny.  A young woman, not quite thirty I’d say, who was there within days of the disaster, handing out clean clothes and warm food to those pulling the bodies out of the water, lining the sands of the beach with the dead.

Questionable in God’s Katrina Kitchen, where a young man named Richard gets up at five a.m. to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for hundreds of volunteers and then goes to sleep at ten p.m. after cleaning up.  His bed used to be a chair he had set up in the kitchen.

Questionable in a camp with middle-aged men like Nash and Rolin who, like Jenny and Richard, sold everything they owned just to help with the rebuilding full time.  Their lives found more meaning once they had no money.

Some might say that Kevin’s questionable faith is not so good.  But after everything he has lost I consider it a miracle that he still believes in God at all.

They say the world is far from perfect.  But how would we ever know courage and sacrifice if it were not for a tragedy like Katrina?

How would we ever know just how much we really need God if it were not for our own desperation?

Like Kevin, I still miss the people I’ve lost.  I always will.

Yesterday, that was an unbearable burden.

Today, I know better.

My grief has taught me compassion.  The betrayals I have endured have taught me mercy, with an extraordinary opportunity to show grace.  And the pain I am somehow surviving, and the pain that people like Kevin are somehow surviving, has brought me a glimpse of the joy God has always intended me to have.

Today I am convinced that God gave us The Golden Rule for our own good.  Because if I am ONLY concerned about my own happiness then I am always going to be unhappy.  It is only when I am more concerned about others, especially people like Kevin, that I find happiness.  And joy.

The world may be fallen and deluded.  Tragic and tormented.  But it is a great place for us to learn what God is teaching us:  compassion, mercy, grace, joy, forgiveness.  Love.

And like those I have lost, these are lessons I’ll never forget.

We’re not superheros.  But as former president Jimmy Carter has said (he also won The Nobel Peace Prize):

“I’ve got one life and one chance to make it count for something…and the something I have chosen is my faith.  Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort.  My faith demands–and this is not optional–my faith DEMANDS that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can to try to MAKE A DIFFERENCE.”

Thank you.