What constitutes healing and restoration for an event like Hurricane Katrina? One thing is sure: “Getting over it” or “moving on” are inadequate solutions.
We learned too much. We grew in love for the city and came together for something larger than ourselves. Just returning to some idealized pre-Katrina “normal” wastes God’s transformative work in our lives. During the Katrina event, God taught us to love even when it is risky. He taught us to love even when it hurts. We have a shared experience that was and is important.
Unfortunately, maintaining the intense post-Katrina love for New Orleans and my neighbors has been difficult through the years. The nearly two-decade gap between the storm and today we have experienced spikes in violence followed by times of relative peace. The economy has boomed and busted several times since the storm. Our city still needs better infrastructure, and City Hall needs to be more efficient. Moments of disillusion come and go.
The Bigger Story
I love stories. By “stories,” I do not just mean fiction … I mean fiction, historical accounts, biographies, and personal stories. I love written stories and those shared verbally. I especially like stories that follow the three-act narrative structure (the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Resolution or Characters, Conflict, and Resolution). I enjoy this narrative structure in fiction, movies, songs, and true stories. More often than not, people naturally use this three-act format to tell their personal stories. It is tidy and neat and does not leave us hanging between conflict and resolution.
The story of healing and restoration after the storm remains unfinished because it is a bigger story than we realized. The Katrina story is less like a novel or play (with a distinct beginning, middle, and ending) and more like an anthology, a collection of related, but different stories. Or maybe we should think of the Katrina story as an epic, drawn-out serial story published over an extended period of time. As with all serial stories, the Katrina story includes many twists and turns. Some individual Katrina stories have resolved, but the post-Katrina epic is ongoing. In some ways, we will live in the liminal space between conflict and resolution throughout the rest of our lives. The ultimate resolution we experience partially depends on our responses day after day.
Unfortunately, we grow tired of the story at times. We worked so hard to help this beautiful but broken place come back yet never saw the full transformation we hoped for. Because we love our city, we still want more for her. We have grown weary from doing good.
The challenging realities of New Orleans can tempt us to “check out” from the tasks God gave us in the Great Commandments and the Great Commission. And the easiest imperative to let go of is the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. That would certainly be a waste of God’s love for us and the lessons He taught us in the aftermath.
I realize now that many of us fostered discontent in our hearts after Katrina with feverish activity. Many of us toiled in the recovery efforts until we were depleted and checked out (for a time), slowly losing a bit of our love for our city/mission field. A better approach would have included sensible periods of work followed by intentional Sabbath rest (God’s strategic rest gift for the soul). Sabbath requires deep trust in the LORD as we withdraw for times with Him. Sabbath rest also helps us see that all our efforts are empty without His work in the lives of others. The most needed recovery work God was doing after the storm occurred in individual hearts as He pushed us to love Him and love others as we love ourselves.
True healing and restoration from Katrina is a lifetime journey, not a destination. It requires us to live out the lessons God taught us as we participate in the Great Commission.
God is still writing this Katrina recovery story in my heart. God is doing His work, but how will I respond?
garydmyers.com 
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