Four years ago today...

August 29 probably isn't a very significant date to most people I know, but to anyone who was living in New Orleans or the gulf coast 4 years ago, it was a life-changing day. Four years ago today hurricane Katrina hit and changed thousands of lives. Since I'm home sick and Jonathan's sleeping, I thought I would retell some of the thoughts from that experience.
JP and I were engaged and had just gotten back to seminary from a summer at camp. (We'd been back here a week and a half to be exact!). Although we knew Katrina was out there, they kept saying it was going to hit Florida, so we stayed with our plans and came up to Gadsden to get engagement pictures made.
I still remember waking up at my parents' house in Gadsden and walking downstairs to see pictures on CNN of water. Water everywhere. It was really hard to even imagine that this had really happened. We searched online for pictures of the seminary. Every picture they showed on tv we tried to figure out where it was, hoping to maybe get an idea of what it looked like on campus. It was a nerve-racking, frustrating, hopeless few days as we searched for information. Eventually we learned that the campus was covered in several feet of water (like the rest of the city), but still had no information about what would happen next. I'm a planner. I HATE not knowing what will happen next. But that's one of the lessons God taught me through this experience.
James 4:14 says "yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." Since apparently I couldn't learn that lesson from scripture alone, God used this object lesson of Katrina to drive the point home. :) I'm not SO much of a planner anymore. The next verse, 15, says "Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'"
There are so many things in life, most things actually, that are out of our control. So instead of stressing about things I have no control over, I try to rest in God's providence and peace and trust that He knows what's best and wants what's best for me and my family. We eventually made it back down here to NOLA (1 year later) and have an immediate connection for ministry with so many people here just because we've been through the same experience. We didn't loose as much stuff as other people, and I know we weren't as emotionally or mentally scarred as others, so I consider us blessed. God has shown Himself faithful to us as individuals and as a seminary family. No, it wasn't fun and I wouldn't want to do it again, but I know God has used it for good (Rom. 8:28). So even though I'll take important papers, pictures, and memories with me for any other evacuations, I know that our lives are in God's hands and that He's in control of all the storms.