It has a mind of its own. A heartbeat. Some sort of weird DNA, a double helix of despair and hope. It’s inside you. Most of the time, you tamp it down, you ignore it, or perhaps you treat the symptoms. Yet it is a part of you, always will be. And at certain times it rears its ugly head, no matter how much you prefer it not to, no matter how quickly you duck, how stubbornly you refuse to acknowledge it.
There are different triggers. Whenever new storms pop up, especially if they are in the Gulf of Mexico, you get that feeling, you look over your shoulder, you try not to fixate but still you remember. And of course as anniversaries approach there is no hiding. Here they come, bombarding you. Articles are written and photos are published and news segments are aired and memorials are revisited. It seems like a dream. It’s not a good one.
The 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is August 29th. I have been preparing a presentation for the good people of St. Paul’s in Delray Beach, so I have been digging into the pictures, the videos, the interviews, the blog posts (which you can still read on here – click the month for archives from August, September, October of 2005 and beyond). The after story is different of course. I cling to those like a life preserver. There is so much that changed in my life because of that storm-that-should-not-be-named. So many really fantastic people I got to meet, so much goodness I got to see and feel and taste and hear from so many saints of God. There are sweet stories of revival and renewal, of relationships begun, of friendships forged by fire and water.
But we can’t go there yet. The 29th must come first. The howling of the wind. The unknown. The fear you could taste. The foolish decisions. The this-cannot-be-real sense when you venture out for the first time….and the next and the next and the next. The pictures bring it all flooding back, flood being the opportune word, the power of water, the utter destruction, the vastness of it all, our minds truly still cannot comprehend, or just simply refuse to.
The folks here in South Florida have suffered hurricanes. In 2005, Wilma did a lot of damage in this area, including to the roof of St. Paul’s. They tell me stories of that time, of no electricity and blue tarps. I know it was scary and challenging. I know they have no idea. It’s not their fault. There had never been one like her, I pray there will never be one worse. I hope I can honor the memories of those who didn’t make it, celebrate the witness of those champions who came to help and also give thanks for those who stuck it out, determined the coast of Mississippi will come back, again, stronger than ever. And in many ways, it has.
But first comes that day. August 29th. So I have to buck up, stand up, straighten up, face it, take it back in again. I know some weird kind of muscle memory will kick in, as painful as can be, so we push through by remembering and telling our tales and giving thanks to God we are here to tell them.
It’s getting closer. I can feel it. I can almost sense the barometric pressure dropping, see the line of cars evacuating, live again the feeling when the roof right behind us blew off and I woke my son up so he could put on his shoes when it became time to run. And in all that, I recognize the importance of marking the day, of letting the memory of her winds peel back the shelter we built around it, knowing it will hurt and understanding we must do this. We must. For we are here, thanks be to God and an army of angels. Every day a gift, every helping hand a way through, we face forward, but first, because it’s almost here, we look back. And we weep.