There were many things I was planning to write about this week. For instance, I wanted to fill you in on the latest from our son’s kindergarten experience and how he refuses to eat lunch at school, preferring salads and grapes in his lunch. Although he has developed a taste for Twinkies, that appears to be his only junk food vice.
I wanted to write about troubles in the workplace and how many of you have seemingly moved past racism as the cause of employment problems, but are finding that power-hungry managers, inept supervisors and bitter, angry co-workers are behind almost as many sleepless nights and heartfelt prayers as prejudice was.
But we made it through slavery, and we can certainly make it past bosses who make you wonder about the promotion process. And, yes, the ugliness of racism is a part of the fabric of the United States. The white supremacist group formerly known as the World Church of the Creator, now calling itself the Creativity Movement, was in the news just this week.
I wanted to write about the new women’s workout program my church has started. There is a small voice inside me that says I can be an athlete again. I can be a runner or weightlifter or even a swimmer!
If my mother, who is, shall we say, a longtime member of the AARP, can take water aerobics three times a week, then my goodness surely I can do something. Judging from the applause the announcement received last week, there are many women in my church who want to get their heart rate up and break a sweat in the name of Jesus!
But all those thoughts went out of my head when Hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast.
We all make fun of those reporters who stand out in the midst of 90-mile-an-hour winds, drenching rain, clutching the hoods of their television station-issued rain coats, broadcasting the devastation as best they can. But I must admit that I was glued to the coverage, trying to get a glimpse of Biloxi, Mississippi or a New Orleans neighborhood that I might recall from my many childhood visits to family there.
As of early this week, my sister-in-law and her husband had evacuated Biloxi, but my mother had still not heard from her sister in New Orleans. I’m sure my aunt is okay, but I could hear the worry in my mother’s voice.
My mother and I both saw the news story of the distraught man in Biloxi who said the water just came upon his house, splitting it in two. His words were as garbled as his emotions, but you could understand him when he described trying to hold on to his wife’s hand and her telling him that he couldn’t and to take care of the kids and grandkids as their grip slipped.
The reporter asked him, through her own tears, where he was going next. ”I don’t know,” the man said. “I don’t know where I am. I’m lost. That was all I had, all I had.”
Why does it take a disaster to put things in their proper perspective? When devastation and loss are so close and so visible, hopefully it makes you pause and thank God for what you have and ask for mercy for those who are suffering.