Ten Years- Katrina Matters

Ten years ago I was a freshman in high school.

I was afraid of high school and who I would become. I wanted to be the popular girl in the movies and a jock and all the right things. But I didn't have a minute to find out who I was.

Katrina interrupted our first semester and whether it was two weeks or two months I don't remember. All I remember was driving for 8 hours what usually took my family 45 minutes to my grandmother's house, having to pee like nobody's business and wondering what was going to happen.

We never left for a storm. We always stayed. This was big. Really big.

We lost power for a little over a week and only could hear what was happening in our home town by word of mouth and hospital TV if the news was on, which it always was (we went to the hospital for AC occasionally).

I could sit here and type out how traumatic returning to a devastated city was. I could tell you how my family lost their home (not my home, but my aunt, cousnins, etc) and everything they held dear. I can tell you how my mother's grandmother's house was ON TENNESSEE ST and was wiped clean off the foundation when the levee broke.

BUT those details are only part of my story. All of those details.  Every emotion that was stirred in me broke through my own levee. For the first time in my life I began to take God seriously.

Instead of thinking I'd return to school as the popular girl or the one that played every sport or the straight A student, I'd be the one that knew her faith.

Now, this is such a huge part of my testimony because this didn't happen until a year later.

But I'm sick and tired of everyone wanting "to get over the Katrina 10 year stuff" because it is IMPORTANT. Stuff happened. People died and LIVED and moved and moved on.

This is part of our story. Katrina is part of my story. Jesus used this storm and devastation to create a new city, a new home for many, and a (excuse the extreme play on words) NEW Orleans.

Don't discount what He did in this city. Just listen to the news cast. His name is all over them. The Lord saved people and brought people together to save thousands. And while we still mourn for those lost, we celebrate their lives in true New Orleans fashion: with second lines and hope.

Somehow, through all her winds and rains, hope still shown through Katrina's dark clouds.

10 years has done so much.