Yesterday morning I was sitting in the den eating breakfast and watching the news. It is heartbreaking to watch a city being slowly submerged into destruction. All of a sudden from upstairs I hear a scream. It’s Anna screaming and there is terror in her voice. This is not a “I’m playing” kind of scream. This is a serious “finger in a light socket” kind of scream. I was sure she was seriously injured.
I set down my yogurt and sprinted up the stairs. When I made it to Anna’s bedroom Andrea was already there and Anna was sitting on the floor, her shoe flung across the hall and she was yelling “A BUG!” I looked at the shoe and out of it crawled a slender bug. I walked over and stepped on it and it sounded as if I were stepping on leaves in the front yard in the fall. Anna would have told me it was from the bug’s crunchy exoskeleton if she weren’t so scared. We’ve had these discussions in the past and I wonder, "why does my first grader already know about exoskeletons"?
My heart stopped pounding and I said, “Anna, it’s just a bug.” I had no sympathy. But Andrea walked up to Anna, put her arms around her and with way more compassion than I had she said, “When I was a little girl like you I had the exact same thing happen to me. I put my shoe on and there was a bug in it and I screamed just like you did. And today I still tap my shoes and look inside to make sure there are no bugs in them before I put them on. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
Andrea had a kind of sympathy I didn’t understand because she had been where Anna was and I had not.
That’s how I feel about the victims Hurricane Katrina. I know that everyone sympathizes with them on some level but I feel that those of us on the Gulf Coast have a special kind of pain as we watch this tragedy continue to unfold. Beyond that, I think that those who have lost home, possessions, and worst of all the lives of those they love in a hurricane especially understand the pain of those in Louisiana and Mississippi; more than I ever could.
I feel helpless. I know that there are some who made a horrible mistake by staying. There are some who had no choice but to stay. There are some who ran. All of them have needs. Physical needs, emotional needs, relational needs; but more than anything they need love, mercy, grace and hope. When everything looks so dire and the future is in question the victims of the storm need hope … hope that everything can one day be okay again.
Those of you who live in Southern Brazoria County can check our church’s web sight. Very soon we will post some tangible ways to help those who are taking refuge here…. <
link>
We plan to organize trips to the areas affected by the hurricane when we can be of help and not be in the way. Check back to
brazospointe.com to see how you can be involved.
